Oral Answers to Questions

David Miliband: I do think it is important that America becomes fully engaged with development issues, and the size of its economy gives it a unique capacity to do so. Let me say to my right hon. Friend—I hope that he will still talk to me when I have said this—that of all the things the Bush Administration have done, one of the most significant was their work on health issues. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] It would be nice to see a few of my hon. Friends expressing agreement as well. I am trying to persuade them.
	May I draw to my right hon. Friend's attention—in the nicest possible way, and without asking him to sign up to anything else—the significance of the $5 billion PETFAR health programme? Perhaps the best way of doing that is to point out that it provides an excellent basis on which the Obama Administration can build in strong and dramatic ways.

Gillian Merron: We also condemn the appalling bombings, and I join my right hon. Friend in offering condolences and sympathy to all those affected. I also commend my right hon. Friend on the work he does in support of Somaliland, and I share his view that fostering links between young people is crucial. I am glad that, under the Department for International Development global schools partnership programmes, four primary schools in Somaliland are linked with primary schools in Cardiff, involving some 4,000 children in Somaliland. We also need to have virtual links between schools, so I am glad that the British Council is developing the online element of its connecting classrooms programme, to enable links to be made between parts of the world, particularly those areas where travel is dangerous.

Bill Rammell: As I recall, the most recent United Nations survey shows something like a 19 per cent. reduction in poppy cultivation, and the number of poppy-free provinces has increased from 13 to 18. I do not deny that we and the Afghan authorities continue to face a significant challenge, but it is fundamentally in our national interest to address it, given that 95 per cent. of the heroin that ends up on British streets derives from Afghanistan.

Bill Rammell: I will revert to my hon. Friend on the details of that question. What I can say with conviction is that tackling poppy cultivation in Afghanistan remains a fundamental priority that we are taking forward with vigour.

William Hague: I think that that answer means that the Foreign Secretary will make no attempt to explain any inconsistency between his remarks last month and his actions this month. What he said last month was in line with the EU summit of 1 September, which said that the implementation of the ceasefire agreement "has to be complete". I realise that in the past couple of weeks he has probably been overruled by the Prime Minister—or, more alarmingly, by the Business Secretary—but does it not show extraordinary weakness for the Government and the EU to be unable to stick to a firm position for even three months on an agreement that the EU itself sponsored and negotiated? What sort of message does that send to Russia about the future? In our dealings with Russia, do we not need to demonstrate consistency and strategic patience, and does not what he has agreed to make this country and our partners look incapable of either?

Caroline Flint: I thank my hon. Friend for her question. It is absolutely vital that all those who live in Bosnia and Herzegovina feel that they have a stake in their future. That is what we are attempting to ensure, in co-operation with other EU partners and the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, whom I was pleased to meet last week. We have to make sure that we can focus on the big picture, which is security and prosperity for all who live in that country, but security for that part of the Balkans is also an important factor.

Geoff Hoon: If I could make a little more progress, I will give way in due course.
	We recognised at the time that this would have implications for people around Heathrow, which is why we have made that commitment subject to meeting stringent local environmental conditions. Let me remind the House of what those conditions are. First, we must meet our European obligations with regard to local air quality. That means that pollution from particulates and nitrogen dioxide are within prescribed limits by the time any capacity changes are implemented.

Geoff Hoon: I undertook to give way in a moment. If the hon. Lady will wait, I shall set the scene and set out the principles. It is important that the House should have this opportunity. I will certainly give way when we get on to the detail.
	We have since undertaken a three-year programme of technical analysis to assess whether these conditions can be met for a new runway given the construction time frame, as well as for the other options we set out for adding capacity at the airport. I will return to these conditions in more detail later in my speech.
	After that work had concluded, the consultation launched in November last year invited views on three different options: first, a third runway with a new terminal around 2020; secondly, mixed-mode landing and take-off patterns within existing capacity around 2010 and a third runway with a new terminal around 2020; and thirdly, mixed-mode within existing capacity around 2010, full mixed-mode around 2015 and a third runway with a new terminal around 2020. The mixed-mode process involves using each runway for both landings and landings and take-offs—the kind of operation that happens now at any single-runway airport such as Gatwick or Stansted. At Heathrow, however, it would mean aircraft arriving and departing on both runways, in contrast to the current practice of runway alternation, whereby aircraft normally arrive on one runway and depart from the other. Mixed-mode operations could provide additional runway capacity in the period before a third runway could be operational.

Geoff Hoon: I will give way in a second.
	Indeed, the need for new capacity was recognised by the Opposition when they were in Government. As recently as 1995, my predecessor, the noble Lord Mawhinney, was telling this House that he recognised there was
	"a strong case for additional runway capacity in the south-east".—[ Official Report, 2 February 1995; Vol. 253, c. 859W.]

David Taylor: My right hon. Friend spoke about a strategy for developing aviation. Would not any half decent strategy include economic factors? Should not those economic factors include, for example, the £9 billion that the aviation industry gains from its tax-free status for fuel and freedom from VAT? Why do we not factor in the costs of community destruction and climate change, noise and air pollution, as the White Paper did not? It is not too late to do so now.

George Young: Is it not the case that the growth of low-cost flights has been in flights from airports other than Heathrow?

Geoff Hoon: If the hon. Gentleman has studied the White Paper as carefully as I hope he has, he will have noticed that we are talking about the requirements for this country's aviation to 2030. As I have referred to the previous Conservative Government looking into capacity in the early 1990s and concluding by 1995 that Heathrow was already full in a practical sense, let me make it clear that even if we decided to go ahead today, which clearly we will not, it would be at least 2020 until a further runway was available and a further terminal constructed. That means that some 30 years would have elapsed on a decision that was being considered by the previous Conservative Government in the early 1990s.
	It is therefore wrong to suggest that the issue can be determined on the basis of this year's or next year's forecast. We are talking about a strategic decision. It is disappointing that the Conservative Opposition have, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying so, simply adopted the rather short-term approach that is characteristic of the Liberal Democrats.

Malcolm Rifkind: The Secretary of State has repeated that he is interested in a long-term, strategic solution to the problems of British aviation. He is as aware as anyone that the constraint imposed by the Heathrow site—it is surrounded by residential communities and all flight paths have to go over them—means that there must be a limit to its expansion. There cannot simply be more runways and terminals as the years go by. Will he give some thought to, for example, a feasibility study for a Thames estuary airport or some equivalent? Aviation will doubtless grow. Such a study would enable us to feel that in the long term, there could be a solution that could enable it to grow without causing untold misery for all the communities that are currently affected by it.

Geoff Hoon: I am going to make a little more progress before I give way again.
	I have been describing the expansion in the demand for aviation. It is not only about greater personal freedom and keeping in touch with far-flung friends and family. Aviation in general continues to make a significant contribution to the UK economy. It brings in around £11 billion a year, and it supports 200,000 jobs directly, and many more indirectly.
	As one distinguished commentator from  The Times has said:
	"If we're going to remain competitive in the future, then of course we're going to have to ensure that we have the capacity to allow goods and individuals to move freely into and out of this country".
	Who am I to argue with the insight and wisdom of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) on this matter? It is therefore crucial that we continue to protect Britain's position and plan for the long term. To those who propose that we sit on our hands and do nothing, I ask: what are the alternatives? Are we to ration flights? Are we to go back to a situation in which only the rich can travel abroad, a policy that many Opposition Members actually favour? The practical consequence of their policy would be the export of jobs to the continent. That is what would happen if the Conservative party got its way. Those are the real questions for this debate which the Conservative party must address and answer.

Geoff Hoon: The hon. Gentleman knows full well that proposals for constructing a major hub airport in the Thames estuary have been made every decade for the past three decades. Those proposals have been considered, examined and, unfortunately, found wanting. They were given proper and serious consideration, but I accept that the issue will come up again and again; I shall return to it later.

Geoff Hoon: I will when I have finished making this point.
	The existence of those connecting passengers means that airlines can operate routes that might not otherwise be viable. It also means that operators can offer greater choice and more frequent services than they could if they relied only on meeting local demand or providing "point to point" services. Without the connecting passengers, we could potentially lose flights from Heathrow to destinations such as Seattle, Bangalore and Riyadh.
	Heathrow also serves crucial domestic markets.  [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet is muttering away. If she listens she will understand the argument, but it is quite important for her to listen first of all.
	There are 10 United Kingdom airports served by Heathrow, including cities that are vital to the regional economies of this country such as Aberdeen, Belfast, Newcastle and Glasgow. Links to Heathrow are essential to enable passengers from those airports to connect with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, however, Heathrow is already losing its ability to serve its many customers across the country as a result of capacity constraints. The number of destinations served by it has fallen by 20 per cent. since 1990. Services to places such as Inverness, Newquay, Plymouth, Prestwick, Guernsey and the Isle of Man have all ceased to operate. Heathrow now serves around 184 destinations compared with Amsterdam's 233, Paris's 244 and Frankfurt's 289, and without additional capacity its position will be eroded even further.
	If I had to highlight one statistic that underlines Heathrow's importance to the United Kingdom's economy, it would be the statistic that more than 70 per cent. of foreign companies moving to the United Kingdom for the first time choose a location within an hour's journey of Heathrow.

David Wilshire: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Before we lose sight of his comment on Airtrack, may I ask a question? That route will largely go through my constituency and will have a major new station at Staines. Does he agree that it will not only help passengers to get off the roads, but it will also help a very large number of people who work at Heathrow and live in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies get to work by train, which they cannot do at present?

Geoff Hoon: I do not accept that for a moment, and I shall deal with the environmental arguments in due course. Although I have been on my feet for a while, I have been answering questions as well as making a speech. Given the hon. Gentleman's implicit criticism, I shall make some further progress.
	I need to deal with the suggestion that Heathrow might be replaced with a new airport in the Thames estuary. As I have said, 400 potential locations for a new airport in the south-east were assessed ahead of the 2003 White Paper, including a number in and around the Thames estuary area. After detailed analysis of the costs and benefits, the Government decided against a completely offshore airport, but consulted on a serious proposition for a new four-runway airport at Cliffe in north Kent. After careful consideration, that proposal was rejected for three major reasons—high up-front costs; lower benefits than the options for the development of existing airports; and a significant risk that the site would not be financially viable—and it should be noted that it was the best of the options for a completely new airport. The bird populations in the area were also a significant consideration, given the significant safety implications arising from the risk of bird strike.
	I know that the new Mayor of London is an enthusiast for that scheme, but I am less clear on the position of the Conservative party. Just last Friday, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), to whom I would be delighted to give way, was asked whether her party liked the Mayor's plan. Her answer was "That's Boris's proposal", which reveals the chaos and confusion on the Benches opposite. I hope that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet will today be able to clarify her party's position on the Thames estuary proposal, once and for all. I look forward to what she has to say.
	The arguments against increasing capacity at Heathrow involve the impact on our environment. Some argue that capping capacity at Heathrow will somehow cap the climate change impact. It is clear, for all the reasons I have set out, that if there is not sufficient capacity at Heathrow, the reality is that more and more flights will simply move east to Schiphol, Paris or Frankfurt—other hub airports that are in direct competition for long-haul services. There will be no reduction in carbon emissions; they will simply be displaced and British jobs will be lost.
	We should also remember that as Heathrow is now full and operating at 99 per cent. capacity, there is a good chance that without further development we will actually add to the environmental burden: the resilience of the airport will decrease, delays will increase and more planes will be stacked above us using fuel and producing carbon emissions across the south-east of England. The current congestion and lack of capacity wastes fuel and increases carbon emissions.
	Lord Stern advocated international emissions trading as a central part of plans to reduce carbon emissions, and that is precisely the approach that this Government have pursued. We have been working hard over recent years to ensure that aviation is included in the EU emissions trading scheme, and that is exactly what is going to happen from 2012. It means that CO2 emissions from EU aviation, covering all departing and arriving flights, will be capped at 97 per cent. of average 2004 to 2006 emissions in 2012, tightening to 95 per cent. in 2013. As a result, any growth in aviation emissions from the expansion of Heathrow would be fully offset by a reduction in emissions elsewhere. Moreover, the scheme would be EU-wide, affecting all EU hub airports equally. It is simply wrong to say that more planes at Heathrow means there will be more CO2 emissions overall.

Theresa Villiers: My hon. Friend's point is excellent, and I do not need to add to it.
	I turn to the alleged benefits of a third runway. The economic arguments simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Their main sources are the 2006 study by Oxford Economic Forecasting and the "Adding capacity at Heathrow airport" consultation document. Both contain serious flaws. Neither makes any attempt to include the cost impact of NOx pollution, a point made strongly by the Environment Agency, the Government's own environment adviser. Nor is the cost of noise in the areas around the airport assessed. Anyone who owns a property under the flight path will say that noise has a real financial impact. It has even been reported that Hounslow primary care trust is considering attempting to recoup from BAA the costs of health care for noise and pollution-related illnesses in the borough. Neither document includes the carbon cost of inbound international flights. The consultation document incorrectly lists revenue from air passenger duty as a net benefit to the UK, although clearly much of that would be simply a transfer from the private to the public sector. In its study for the Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise, the Dutch economic consultancy CE Delft concludes that Oxford Economic Forecasting considerably overestimates the extent of suppressed business demand for air travel at Heathrow.

Martin Salter: I may be the only hon. Member here born within a stone's throw of the perimeter fence of Heathrow airport. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) is right, in that an airport drives economic activity and the prosperity of an area. However, living directly under a flight path is a negative factor and is included in all estate agents' particulars.

Norman Baker: I am wrestling with the Government's concept that Heathrow will be badly hit if there is no third runway, with jobs lost and disappearing airlines and flights. However, the same time they suggest that a high-speed rail would make no difference and Heathrow would still be up to capacity if it were introduced. That does not add up.

Geoff Hoon: Of course I did not make that claim. These are long-term, strategic decisions that the country expects the Government to take. They are not driven by winning the next election or by appeasing people who are understandably concerned about noise—they are about taking a sensible strategic view. I demonstrated statistically to the hon. Lady the fact that this country is already losing out to Schiphol and Frankfurt. In a horizon that goes to 2030, we would expect a little more of the Conservatives thinking in the long term, and not taking easy, populist decisions. She has to face up to that.
	The hon. Lady completely failed to deal with the points that I made about the number of long-distance destinations served by Heathrow having fallen since 1990. Let me give her one further statistic to consider. More people now travel from Manchester to Schiphol than through Heathrow in order to get connecting flights. Why is that? Because Schiphol has a greater number of destinations available. That will continue, and, in the long term, it will affect the competitiveness of the British economy.

Theresa Villiers: No, I would like to make a bit of progress. I am conscious that the Front Benchers are taking up a lot of time, and lots of Back Benchers want to speak.
	The potential for substituting high-speed rail for flights is likely to improve significantly with improvements and additions to the high-speed rail network in the UK and the rest of Europe. Furthermore, there is an increasingly widespread acknowledgment that the flight growth forecast made in the 2003 White Paper should be revisited. The White Paper is simply no longer fit for purpose, drafted as it was in completely different economic times and before the urgent need to tackle climate change had forced its way up the political agenda. Eurostar tells us that its high-speed trains emit just a tenth of the carbon of competing aviation. The latest generation of high-speed trains from Alstom are greener still.
	Even with a higher carbon electricity generation mix than those figures assume, it is clear that high-speed trains are far greener than planes. Our high-speed link would provide a major boost to jobs throughout the country, but the impact would be particularly strongly felt in the midlands and the north, helping to remedy long-standing imbalances in the economy—imbalances that have seen more and more pressure piled on the south-east with the north left at an economic disadvantage and starved of the transport improvements it needs.

Tom Harris: More than 50 flights every day take place between Scottish airports and Heathrow, but the hon. Lady's plans for high-speed trains seem to stop at Leeds. Is there a particular reason why she does not think it important to cut down the number of flights from Heathrow to Scotland?

Theresa Villiers: Well, the Government's plans do not even make a start on high-speed rail. I can see enormous benefits of having a high-speed link all the way to Scotland, but we have to be realistic about what we can deliver and when. We have to take care to ensure that all our promises are deliverable.

Theresa Villiers: No, I am sorry, I am about to conclude.
	We hope that our scheme will be the foundation of a country-wide high-speed network that will transform the country's transport infrastructure and radically improve our competitiveness. The Government's aviation White Paper is fundamentally flawed, as is their "Adding capacity at Heathrow" consultation document. Their consultation is a sham—no one believes a word that they say about environmental pre-conditions. They pushed for the terminal 5 flight cap to be lifted when the ink was barely dry on the planning inquiry that imposed it. They said that they would not let their expansion plans violate EU air quality rules, yet today the Secretary of State confirmed that he is applying for a derogation from them. They want to remove all semblance of democratic scrutiny of the ultimate decision on the issue by giving it to an unaccountable quango. They are split down the middle on Heathrow.
	On the question of Heathrow expansion, the world has moved on, but Labour has not moved with it. It is on the wrong side of the argument. The Government are wrong about the economics, wrong about the environment and wrong about noise and quality of life. I therefore appeal again to the Secretary of State to see sense, seize the chance to do the right thing and say no to a third runway at Heathrow.

John McDonnell: For literally thousands of my constituents, the debate is too important for party political knockabout or policy making by electioneering.
	According to the Government's figures, at least 1,500 of my constituents will be forcibly removed from their homes in the village of Sipson. Another 4,000, in the villages of Longford, Harmondsworth and Harlington, will have their homes virtually surrounded by the airport or the road network. Noise and air pollution will render their homes unliveable in, and they will lose not only their homes but their communities. Those villages have survived for 1,000 years. They have community halls, churches, a gurdwara, a doctor's surgery and so on. All will be wiped off the face of the earth. The only difference between those communities and others is that they will be sacrificed for BAA's profits.
	It has been argued that people should have known before moving into the area that the runway posed a risk. However, we are considering settled communities, with families who go back generations in the area, and successive Governments have assured them that no further expansion of Heathrow will occur. I remember vividly the community meeting that BAA representatives attended. One of them read out the "Dear Neighbour" letter, which gave the assurance that BAA would not seek a third runway if it gained a fifth terminal.
	My constituents have been subjected to a litany of lies and deceit about the development of the airport. First, we were told that there would be a runway but no terminal. In weeks, there was a lobby for a new terminal. Then we were told that the development would encompass only one village; we now know that it will encompass all the villages to the north of the airport.
	We have recently seen plans for the road network. To my constituents' distress, one of the roads is planned to go through our local cemetery. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick) assured us in the House that that was not the case, but subsequently had to apologise to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and admit that he was wrong because BAA had supplied the information. I am told that this week I will receive another letter from BAA, assuring me that there will be no road through the cemetery. I will believe that—just as I believed the Sir John Egan letter of several years ago.
	When the White Paper was published, the Government gave us assurances that any development had to stand the test, especially for air pollution, that an independent consultation exercise would take place to verify that, and that the process would be peer reviewed. The process was peer reviewed, but the information that went into it was not; it was largely provided by BAA. It reached a farcical level when, as has already been mentioned, fictitious aeroplanes were invented.
	I am told that QinetiQ was involved in some of the assessments of the supposedly independent process, yet an advert in the  Financial Times only a few weeks ago listed it as one of the companies that supports the expansion of Heathrow. BAA tainted the evidence, confidence in the process was undermined and integrity was breached. Ministerial statements, which are so positively in favour of the third runway, are interpreted as pre-empting the Government's decision and the consultation.
	All that leads to the conclusion that if the Minister announces that a third runway is to go ahead, litigation will ensue because the consultation was contaminated. If local residents lose, the litigation will be followed by a lengthy public inquiry, which, covering a sixth terminal and third runway, would make the terminal 5 inquiry appear almost brief.
	It is time to stand back and review the position, because the situation, and the evidence, have moved on since 2003. We now know more about the effect of air pollution, which will cover the south of my borough. We now know that the new aeroplane technology that we were promised would be developed has not materialised. We now also know that we already violate the European Union's air pollution directive. That means that a number of my constituents are already living in a poisoned atmosphere. It also means that with a third runway, we will have no chance of meeting the European directive limits, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) said.
	Reference has been made to the ANASE study, which I welcomed, and which said that the level of noise at which people get annoyed and their quality of life is affected would be 50 dB, not 57 dB. That means that 2 million people, rather than 200,000, as was originally envisaged, will suffer.
	On the health of my constituents, like other hon. Members, I have been urging a health impact assessment, but the Government have consistently refused to undertake one. We are told that one will take place during the planning inquiry process, but that will be too late to inform the Secretary of State's pre-Christmas decision, which we await. We now know much more about the effects on health, however, including from the Chicago study on the links to cancer and from more recent studies on the links to stress and heart conditions.
	We were given a reminder of the safety risks at Heathrow only two years ago, when an aeroplane fell out of the sky and was literally minutes away from crash-landing in one of the most densely populated areas of the country. I still fear for people's safety with all this over-flying, particularly given the risk of terrorist attack.
	Our position on climate change has moved on since 2003. I welcomed—indeed, the whole House welcomed—the commitment to the 80 per cent. target in the Climate Change Bill. I voted for the Bill, but there is no way that we will be able to meet that target with the expansion of aviation at Heathrow. The Tyndall study basically says that if we want to cope with the increase in emissions from aviation on our current growth path, we will virtually have to shut down the rest of UK industry. That is obviously not feasible. The two things are not compatible.
	That is why Lord Smith, the chair of the Environment Agency, told the Government that building a third runway at Heathrow would be a mistake. It is not just him saying that, however. The Government's Sustainable Development Commission and the Institute for Public Policy Research, in the joint study that we commissioned, have said that the Government should stand back and allow an independent review of the White Paper. The European Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, has made it clear that we are already violating EU directives and have little chance of meeting them in future.
	I listened to what the Secretary of State said last week about the existing limits, and the impact of our non-compliance on the health of Londoners overall worries me. We are now revisiting the economic arguments, too. What concerns me is the automatic acceptance of some of the economic arguments that were put forward in certain studies—I would not say that they were shoddy, but it is now coming to light that those studies were paid for by the industry.
	New information comes to light even as we drill down into the consultation paper. I refer to the work of Jeff Gazzard, the aviation expert and environmentalist, that was published this week. He says that even with the 480,000 limit still in place, the Department for Transport and BAA agree that we can grow passenger numbers at Heathrow from 67 million in 2006 to 85 million in 2015 and 95 million in 2030. Why? Because aeroplanes are getting bigger and can carry more passengers in each flight. That throws into question the very need for expansion.
	With regard to competition with other European airports, we now have a world-leading aviation industry in London and the south-east, with a five-airport system. Each of those airports plays a specialist role, developing and competing effectively. The reason Schiphol and other airports have different flight movements is that we have won all the best at the Heathrow—the most profitable ones. I will not rehearse the point about how the economic arguments have been exaggerated, but alternatives have been brought forward.
	It is not just the Conservatives who have proposed the alternative, high-speed link; it is the coalition of rail and other unions, which has commissioned its own independent study. It means that we have the opportunity to expand our transport network overall without the significant environmental cost of the expansion of Heathrow. I must also say that the breaking up of BAA by the Competition Commission has urged the Government to review their aviation policies.

Norman Baker: It might well do so.
	Another factor is the price of travel. According to a parliamentary answer that I received from the Government—of course, we must believe Government statistics—the average cost of a one-way flight in the United Kingdom has declined from £205 in 1997 to £103 today. In other words, the cost of domestic flights has halved. Meanwhile, the cost of travelling by rail, which is much more carbon-friendly, has increased by more than the rate of inflation, and the Government refuse to rule out further above-inflation increases. They have stuck to the RPI plus 1 formula—RPI plus 3 for those who happen to live in the wrong part of the country—driving up rail prices while air prices are cut. That is not a sensible climate change policy, by any stretch of the imagination.
	Climate change is an important issue, which was rightly raised by both the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). I am pleased that the Government have introduced a climate change Bill, and I congratulate them on the fact that ours is the first country in the world to introduce such legislation. That is a matter for consensus. I am equally delighted that the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley)—along with others, including my colleagues—has helpfully managed to persuade the Government to increase their 60 per cent. target to an 80 per cent. target.
	All that is good news. We need an 80 per cent. target, because the climate change challenge that we face is enormous. But how can it possibly square with the construction of an extra runway at Heathrow? How does it square with the predict and provide policy that the Government seem so determined to maintain? How does it square with the additional flights, increased pollution and increased carbon emissions that will inevitably accompany an increase in the number of flights from Heathrow? The Government are talking about almost doubling the number of flights. How does that square with an 80 per cent. cut in carbon emissions?

Tom Harris: I have been trying to resist the temptation of imagining that I am still the Minister responsible for the railways, but since I was the Minister for the railways at the time when the White Paper was produced, I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the 2014 forecast is purely and simply to allow a spending programme to be set for that control period. The hon. Gentleman knows that is the case, and he also knows that this is the first Government who have set out such long-term spending plans for the railways, and that the White Paper included a 30-year strategy for the railways as well as the high-level output specification to 2014.

Norman Baker: 2014 is not a long-term date, and there is nothing in the 30-year strategy beyond 2014. The hon. Gentleman was a very good Minister; he was able to make a threadbare and hopeless case sound convincing, so I am unclear as to why the Government did not keep him on the Front Bench.

Louise Ellman: This is an important debate and it is clear that hon. Members on all sides of the argument have very strong feelings. I shall attempt to highlight some of the key problems that need to be considered carefully.
	The Transport Committee has considered this issue on three occasions in the context of inquiries into broader aviation matters. First, in 2003, in a study on aviation, the Committee concluded that the development of existing sites in a targeted way was one way to deal with the anticipated expansion of aviation. The Committee said that
	"if the Government believe Heathrow should expand its position as a prime European hub then expansion is needed there as a matter of urgency".
	The Committee recognised the significance of the environmental concerns and said that a decision must not be taken lightly.
	More recently, the Committee conducted two further inquiries—on passengers' experience of air travel in July last year, and this year in March on the future of BAA. In both inquiries, the Committee considered poor conditions at Heathrow, which is currently overcrowded. It castigated the monopoly airport owner—BAA—and advocated its break-up. The Committee found that inadequate runway capacity was a major cause of the problems that passengers experienced at Heathrow. The report supported the Government's proposal to add capacity at Heathrow, subject to strict environmental conditions being met. That is a key condition.
	Underlying many of the comments in support of the expansion of Heathrow was the recognition of it as an international hub, important to our economy and the jobs in it. It is our only such hub, with 68 million passengers a year and 56 per cent. of freight. It is because of the high volume of transit passengers that the hub is able to operate long-haul flights to multiple destinations, including to centres of economic growth in China and India that are important to our economy. If the arguments in favour of expansion are to be challenged, the whole issue of whether Heathrow should be an important international hub needs to be considered.

Louise Ellman: I am sorry, but I am unable to do so in the time allowed.
	An alternative airport has been suggested in the Thames estuary, but would face major problems. Perhaps that proposal should be considered more seriously.
	Several issues that have been identified need more scrutiny than they have had so far. Can the environmental conditions that we have set be met? They include noise and air quality in the locality of Heathrow, and the contribution to climate change. We must also consider our obligations under the Climate Change Bill to reduce emissions. We must remember that a transfer of flights to Schiphol or elsewhere in Europe would mean only a transfer of emissions, not a reduction. We should look much more closely at changes in technology and aircraft design, including alternative fuels. That point has been mentioned in today's debate, but I do not think it has been scrutinised very deeply.
	The recent provisional decision by the Competition Commission suggested that BAA should be broken up, and steps have already been taken in that direction with BAA stating that it wishes to sell Gatwick airport. That will have implications for financing and the efficiency of BAA as an operator.
	What are the implications of the current recession for long-term aviation trends? Much has been made of the recent reduction in aviation caused by the recession—indeed, we may only be at the beginning of what may prove to be a prolonged recession. However, these plans are about the future—about 2020 and beyond. We need to take a further look at what the recession might mean for long-term aviation trends and for trends in our economy.
	Those are all important questions that need to be addressed in the planning process. It would be helpful if the Secretary of State could say how he envisaged any proposal for the expansion of Heathrow proceeding. Would it be conducted under existing planning legislation or under new planning proposals? How would that scrutiny take place in both those scenarios?

David Wilshire: The hon. Gentleman has asked me that before, and I shall have to give him the same answer. If that is what is necessary, that is what is necessary.
	I believe that the answer to the question, "Can we all agree on anything?" is—to quote someone else—"Yes, we can." Do we not all agree that shutting Heathrow is a bad idea? Do we not all agree that Heathrow has problems? Do we not all agree that we want a better Heathrow? If I am right, and we all agree on those points, that means that we are all signed up to keeping Heathrow open, curing its problems and deciding how to make it better.
	If Heathrow is to survive it has to prosper, which is the opposite of what is happening at the moment. To keep Heathrow open, we all need to be against the proposals made by the Mayor of London. As he rightly says, for his scheme to work Heathrow will have to be shut. If that happened, where would it leave the 70,000 people who work inside the boundary fence? They would face redundancy. I hope we all agree that redundancies are a bad thing.
	Heathrow's key problems are all horribly familiar to us: frustrating departure delays, annoying landing delays, cancelled flights, missing bags—[Hon. Members: "Noise."] I shall come to noise later; do not worry. We all agree that those problems have to be overcome. The problems of planes queuing to take off and circling overhead before landing can only sensibly be solved by another runway. Many cancellations are caused by delay: if runways are 99 per cent. full, when flights are delayed they simply cannot be slotted in between the other flights that are waiting to take off, and they become cancellations.
	Many of the bags that go missing do so because of landing delays. Those delays leave too little time for a bag to make it from the flight that it has come in on to the flight that it should go out on. Again, the solution is to get rid of landing delays, for which we need another runway.

David Wilshire: I am coming to the fact that Heathrow's competition is already doing damage.
	Heathrow also has some lesser known problems. Some have already been mentioned tonight. The airport is losing routes—down from 230 to 180. By comparison, the competitors which my hon. Friend is concerned about are gaining routes and passengers. If Heathrow loses its transfer passengers, as some suggest it will, it will lose even more routes and become less viable.

Alan Keen: I want to make a few points almost at random, but I shall start by noting that my friend the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said that planes are somehow getting less noisy. For people in my constituency, the difference is like getting hit on the head very hard as opposed to extremely hard. It is impossible for them to live proper lives, or to enjoy time out in their gardens. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman supports my opposition to the ending of runway alternation, but the planes are not really any quieter.
	I agree with every word that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said. I have nothing to gain in election terms from this debate. I am often told by BAA that most of my constituents support expansion, although others tell me differently. In any case, I do not think that this should be a political issue, so I shall say what I always say in these debates.
	Along with my special friend who is Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen), up to now I have always supported Heathrow expansion. We both supported terminal 5, but there has to be a limit at some point. Whatever the hon. Member for Spelthorne may say, there really is no room for another runway on the south side of the airport. In fact, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has said so many times, there is no room for another runway on the north side of the airport either.
	I want to speak up for my constituents, many of whom work at Heathrow and depend on it for their living. We understand the economic benefits extremely well, and my constituents have given a tremendous amount to the aviation industry. Many of them came from the Punjab in the late 1950s and early 1960s and, regardless of whether they were professional people, in the main they worked on the ramps at Heathrow airport. They deserve better than the treatment that they are getting now, as we seem to have little concern about the effects of increased noise.
	The ending of runway alternation will make life impossible for some of my constituents, who will never be able to enjoy time in their gardens because planes will be flying over their houses continuously. There will be no day free of that, and I think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State seemed to say that the ending of runway alternation—what is called mixed mode—would lead to there being a few more seconds between each aeroplane. He seemed to suggest that that would be OK, but I return to my point about the difference between being hit on the head very or extremely hard. It is impossible for people to cope when they are being hit on the head by aircraft noise every day, with no break. The people who have given so much to the aviation industry deserve better than that.
	My constituents also deserve better transport. I have said this many times, but they complain as much about the traffic congestion around Heathrow as they do about noise, but the industry wants to spend nothing on that, even though it would improve people's daily lives. They deserve better, and we cannot keep on ignoring them time and again.
	I am a friend of the air transport industry, and I still do work to help with various issues. For instance, we are trying to limit the weight of individual pieces of baggage to 23 kg because, whatever the House may have been told about mechanisation, each suitcase has to be handled by a person. It is important to understand that, although the airport has modern systems, all suitcases—and they can be very heavy—are packed away into aircraft holds by people who have to bend double to do so.
	While I am on this subject, I should like to pay tribute to someone who I presume is beginning to come to the end of his career. Sir Michael Bishop has made a great contribution to the aviation industry. I do not get a lot of joy from the fact that BMI has been sold to Lufthansa, but I want to pay tribute to a man who has given so much of his life to the air transport industry. That is a lot more than most of the chief executives of the large companies give, and that is why they never worry about taking long-term decisions. Most chief executives believe that short-term decisions about profit over the next five or six years are all that really matters, but Sir Michael Bishop has given a lot to the industry.
	The economic arguments for the expansion of Heathrow sound very attractive. Is the airport completely full or not? I wish that I could hold a competition about that here this afternoon. A week on Saturday, I am taking one of my grandsons to see a football game at Middlesbrough. I am taking him on an aeroplane from Heathrow airport—not because I want to, as I always go by train, but because his parents do not like to fly, so the flight will be a special treat for him.
	I wonder how many hon. Members can guess how much the trip from Heathrow to Teesside will cost? I ask that question to illustrate the fact that Heathrow is not really full. In fact, the trip will cost £4 each, which shows that another runway at Heathrow is absolutely unnecessary. The seats are being filled to display to everybody that Heathrow is full, and the slots that are worth so much money have to be justified so that airlines can hold onto them. Obviously, the price is higher with tax, but £4 will be what BMI gets for tickets on that flight.
	People have said that it would be an absolute disaster if Heathrow did not expand; I think that the hon. Member for Spelthorne mentioned that point of view. The airline industry keeps telling us that we need the economic expansion, and says that the expansion and the jobs are important, but why is British Airways looking to shift its engineering work overseas? We are told by the industry that the jobs are important, but it is happy to shift the really high-paid, high-skilled jobs overseas to save a little money. However, the attitude is that it is okay to make more noise for my constituents.
	I have already said that it does not really make a lot of difference whether one is hit on the head very hard or extremely hard. I repeat that when runway alternation ends, people will never again be able to enjoy their garden in the spring or summer. As for planning their lives outside the house, they may be able to dig their garden while the planes are going over incessantly, but they cannot enjoy their garden. That is too much to ask of people who have given their whole lives to the air transport industry. It is repeated time and again—we have heard it said this afternoon—that planes are now a lot quieter. That is just not the case. It is absolutely unacceptable.
	The informal Cranford agreement has existed since the late '50s. My constituents are very close to the take-off point on the northern runway. That is why, unless it is an emergency, planes do not take off towards the east; they use the southern runway. I know that that gives a lot of pain to people on the west side of Heathrow, because planes come in to land along the same line, all day, every day, when the wind comes from the east. People are therefore unhappy on the west side. It is impossible to live a reasonable sort of life close to Heathrow. The Cranford agreement will be done away with as part of the plans before us, and that is completely unacceptable.
	The economic situation has changed dramatically. Will the tremendous demand for air transport continue, or not? Some people say that the jobs will go, and others disagree, but if the economic situation has changed dramatically, let us take account of that when making decisions about Heathrow airport. We all understand the seriousness of sustainable development considerations much more than we did five or 10 years ago. Let me make a simple point that I have made before: if there is to be a contraction of air transport need, we will not need expansion at Heathrow. However, if need continues to increase year on year, there will be less need for Heathrow to be a hub, as there will be enough flights from Manchester and other regional airports to justify flights from those regional airports to many other destinations around the world. That would take away the need for people to travel to Heathrow.
	We have not reviewed the situation in the light of the changed circumstances. I ask the Secretary of State and those who will take the decisions to look again at the likely scenario. The Secretary of State said that we are talking about long-term decisions. It will be the first time that the air transport industry has ever made a long-term decision; as I have mentioned, chief executives usually stay in their position for a few years, and then disappear.

Tom Harris: I hope that the House does not adopt that particular view.
	The Bill was initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), and I had the privilege of taking the measure through its remaining stages in the House until it received Royal Assent earlier this year. I have strong reservations regarding the effect of the cancellation of the third runway on Crossrail, which will link Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Kent in the east, and will provide an essential link to the City of London from Heathrow. In recognition of the importance of that link, the City will fund up to a third of the £16 billion capital cost. It is a robust funding package, but it is not immune to external factors, including any Government decision to say no to a third runway.
	If the Government expressed such a lack of confidence in Heathrow's future, how would the confidence of City institutions in Crossrail be affected? Is the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) aware of the unhappiness in the business community about her party's policy for Heathrow? I will say something about her solution to capacity constraints at the airport?
	Lest the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) be allowed to have the last word as far as my position on high-speed rail is concerned, I make it clear that I strongly support high-speed rail—for the right reason. I am not in favour of it for environmental reasons in particular, but it has a part to play in the long-term prosperity of this country. It can provide extra capacity, and, if we get High Speed 2 and, I hope, High Speeds 3 and 4 up and running over the next decades, it will be of economic benefit to the whole country. But can we separate the argument for high-speed rail from the argument for the third runway? If we are to propose a high-speed rail network, let us propose it and work towards it. I hope that the next Government—of whichever colour, although I hope that they will be Labour—will begin the planning process for a new high-speed rail network.

Tom Harris: If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I shall try to make progress.
	Can we please, however, separate the argument for high-speed rail from the arguments for the third runway? No one believes the Conservative claim that a high-speed rail network will have any noticeable effect whatever on capacity at Heathrow.

Julian Brazier: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with respect, although he has not explained why he said, in answer to a written question in March, that there was not a single official in his Department working on high-speed rail. Will he not accept that other countries recognise that high-speed rail can replace aviation, that Air France now operates train franchises between Paris and Brussels, which is a step in that direction, and that it is a case not just of replacing many internal flights to places such as Manchester and Leeds, but of potentially replacing some international flights to places such as Brussels and Paris, to which Heathrow could be linked?

Adam Afriyie: I shall keep my comments as sharp and as brief as I can and address four issues: the economic concerns that I have; the concern about the concept of a hub being undermined if Heathrow is not expanded; the quality of life for people around Heathrow and in my constituency; and, why the other options have not been considered in full.
	We live in exceptional times. We have recognised the environmental impact of climate change, we face a banking a crisis and we will face an economic recession or, at least, a serious downturn. The question is how painful and deep that the downturn will be. Under the circumstances, it cannot just be "business as usual" when it comes to Heathrow expansion; something fundamental has changed over the past few years since the White Paper and, certainly, within the past 12 to 14 months. We must therefore re-examine the case for expansion and challenge the assumptions that underpin our thinking about the creation of a third runway at Heathrow. From what I have heard from the Government Front-Bench team today, I must say that their ideas are painfully stuck in the past, they have not been updated as the facts have changed and there is now a strong demand for the renewal of their thinking.
	When the assumptions about economic growth and whether the runway would impact on the environment have been swept away, when the assurances that boom and bust would not return have been exploded, and when the notion that economic growth is inevitable has been turned on its head, it is necessary for us to consider the impact of aviation before rushing into another costly mistake that is out of kilter with the modern world.
	Let us be clear: with a third runway, the quality of life of millions of people will be at risk. But before I reach those concerns, I shall make two quick points, so that I do not end up taking interventions suggesting that I am arguing for Heathrow to close or for it to be undermined. First, Heathrow provides a wonderful level of jobs, contributes greatly to the economy and, along with the other four airports around London, is important in our international framework. Nobody in this debate is arguing for Heathrow to be reduced in size or fundamentally undermined.
	Secondly, from my personal perspective, terminal 5—despite the massive teething troubles—was great, incorporating the idea that if we want to make Heathrow better, why not create a new terminal that makes life easier and smoother for passengers? I am sure that many other things can be done at Heathrow to make travelling far better for those who pass through it or fly directly from or to it.
	I turn to my concerns. First, on the economy,  The Guardian suggested in one of its reports that there will be about a 2 per cent. reduction in the number of flights during this winter alone at Heathrow, amounting to 25 flights a day. The argument has been made that even if there is a downturn or a recession, we will still have to take long-term decisions, and that is absolutely right. However, if we have a three-year or four-year slowdown or a slight decrease in activity, it will nudge forward the point at which any project needs to be started. There have been delays, and I take the point about Crossrail, so we need to make up our minds fairly briskly. However, we should not ignore the fact that a slowdown in economic growth delays the necessity for, and start date of, further developments.
	As an economics graduate, I must say that the Oxford Economic Forecasting report, which I mentioned earlier in an intervention, missed three or four key variables that we must consider when assessing the economic impact of an airport, the economic impact on the take at the Exchequer and the overall value to the economy. If we ignore the money spent abroad by people leaving the UK relative to the money spent here by people who fly in, we clearly ignore a vast sum. That fact seriously undermines the report.

Ann Clwyd: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has answered one of the questions that I was going to ask him. It was about how he travelled when he was a Member of the European Parliament. He was lucky in being able to travel from East Midlands airport. I live 20 minutes from Cardiff airport, but when I was a Euro-MP I had to travel every week, backwards and forwards, to Heathrow. Reasons such as that are among the many reasons why Members other than those with constituencies in or around London are interested in what happens at Heathrow.
	The debate has been interesting and I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the various points of view. However, I am surprised that people have not made the case more strongly for regional airports and their further development. Cardiff airport is just down the road from where I live. Every morning in London I wake up at about half-past 5, for the usual reason—noise overhead. I am arguing for the expansion of Cardiff airport, but I realised this weekend, as I was lying in bed at home in Wales, that I woke at exactly the same time, because there is aircraft noise overhead there as well. Nevertheless, I want to argue for the future of regional airports, because air transport in the UK is over-centralised. Those who have been Euro-MPs will realise that more and more. Compared with other European countries, there is over-centralisation in this country.
	The 2003 White Paper contained a specific undertaking to encourage the growth of regional airports in order to support regional economic development, provide passengers with greater choice, and reduce pressures on more overcrowded airports in the south-east. It also set out the general importance of regional airports to regional economies. Encouraging people to fly on direct services from their local airport rather than making a long journey to a hub airport not only reduces emissions but can reduce travel time for business and leisure users. For example, the airline Flybe estimates that the 900,000 extra passengers that it carries to and from Southampton airport in a two-year period saves 17 million car miles per year. That is an important consideration.
	The 2003 White Paper proposed 33 per cent. higher volumes of air traffic in Cardiff if south-east capacity were constrained and there were no additional runway. The 2006 progress report on the White Paper says that the policy remains to make the best use of existing airport capacity. Cardiff airport has capacity available at all times, including peak times. The other week, on my way to Geneva, I was held up at Heathrow for three and a half hours because of fog, yet my own local airport is practically fog-free all year round. That is an additional irritation and an additional argument for the development of Cardiff-Wales airport.

Susan Kramer: I have obviously timed this terribly badly, because the Secretary of State has just chosen this moment to leave.
	The Secretary of State said something that many of my constituents will regard as the bare-faced truth but that was quite shocking to hear—that not only his Government but previous Governments have clearly given the steer that Heathrow was to expand in future. My constituents have been told very directly, first in the battle over terminal 4 and then over terminal 5, that each expansion was going to be the last. I remember being taken aside by Sir John Egan, who tried to explain that the then Member for Richmond Park, now Baroness Tonge, did not understand aviation economics when she said that terminal 5 would be followed by the third runway.
	I suppose that to hear it said so openly is refreshing in some ways, but in many ways it is a shock. It explains much of the cynicism and concern that my constituents feel about BAA and the Government when it comes to anything to do with Heathrow.
	Someone else no longer in his place, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), talked about the third runway and the expansion of Heathrow as if that were going to lead to a new dawn. There may be a little breathing space when there is some capacity and a pleasant atmosphere but, given the way that BAA runs that airport, it will be filled to the brim even if it has to offer £4 seats. That is how the aviation industry works: if it is given some additional infrastructure and capacity, it will do to fares whatever is necessary to fill it. In only a matter of years, we would return to exactly the same chaos we have now.

Nick Raynsford: Most hon. Members who have spoken referred to the extent to which Heathrow is creaking at the seams. That reflects not neglect or negligence through the failure of Governments in the past 30 or 40 years to expand facilities, but the fact that expansion at Heathrow is inherently problematic. Every proposal for expansion has encountered strong opposition, and the public inquiries that examined the proposals for terminal 5 and, before that, terminal 4 highlighted the conflict between economic, environmental and quality of life arguments. I shall return to that shortly.
	First, I want to reflect on the conclusions of the mammoth inquiry, over which Roy Vandermeer QC presided. He reported on terminal 5 after a five-year inquiry. At the end of an eight-year process, the Secretary of State agreed Vandermeer's proposals for terminal 5, with a clear understanding that there would be a cap of 480,000 flights a year because of the need to protect the environment and people's quality of life. It is worth quoting Roy Vandermeer's report. He said:
	"While I consider that the noise impact of 480,000 movements could be made acceptable, I am firmly of the view that any such further increase in flights, however it might be achieved, would rapidly become intolerable. The proper application of the precautionary principle demands the imposition of a planning condition to prevent this and to restore public confidence that Heathrow would be properly controlled."
	He emphasised restoring public confidence partly because his predecessor Ian Glidewell, who presided over the terminal 4 inquiry, also suggested that if terminal 4 went ahead, it should be accompanied by restrictions. However, no restrictions were imposed in that case. That was in the lifetime of a Conservative Government, so no one should make party political points—Governments of all persuasions probably have something to answer for. However, no restriction was imposed and people felt angry. Roy Vandermeer reflected in his report the anger at the fact that the assurances that had been given could not be believed.
	Those of us with long memories have a sense of déjà vu. Once again, we are presented with economic arguments for further expansion at Heathrow, which would make a mockery of the conditions that Roy Vandermeer set down and that the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mr. Byers), accepted in 2001, and which would expose those living on the flight path to even worse noise and more prolonged noise disturbance than they experience today.
	The proposal for a third runway and mixed-mode operation would increase capacity at Heathrow to up to 720,000 flights a year, compared with the 480,000 that Vandermeer felt was the maximum that could be accommodated. As we have heard, it would involve the demolition of 700 homes at Sipson and the destruction of the community there, as well as having an adverse impact on other surrounding communities. It would intensify noise nuisance for millions of people.

Robert Wilson: I welcome this debate about the huge proposed expansion of Heathrow, which would obviously affect my constituents considerably. Many hon. Members will be wondering what problems Reading might have with such expansion. After all, we are more than 30 miles away. I will try to explain to the House over the next few minutes.
	Reading already suffers from considerable flight traffic, as most of the traffic flying out of and into Heathrow goes over some part of my constituency. I have written to Ministers on a number of occasions to express my concern about the growing levels of noise and pollution. I have also raised concerns about the proposals for increased air traffic with NATS. The general arguments about Heathrow expansion are well rehearsed, including from the Front-Bench spokesmen today, and I do not wish to repeat them. I want to focus on local matters that are important to my constituents. Their quality of life is every bit as important as a flawed decision to expand Heathrow with a third runway.
	I acknowledge that Heathrow is operating at capacity, handling nearly 68 million passengers a year, when it was designed to deal with many fewer. Heathrow plays a disproportionate role in UK aviation—it caters for 35 per cent. of the UK's aviation business traffic, is used by 90 per cent. of airlines and handles nearly 500,000 air traffic movements a year. Heathrow is already a colossus in aviation terms, however we measure it. However, is the answer to the problem really to build a third runway and add terminal capacity at Heathrow?
	The Government looked into the issue in their White Paper, as the Secretary of State said, and set out three conditions. I do not want to repeat them in detail, but they can be summarised as noise, pollution and public access. My constituents are interested in the first two—noise and pollution—both of which I have received regular complaints about. It was therefore a great disappointment to them that the Government appear to be focusing the case for expanding Heathrow on the airport's role in supporting the UK economy. It is almost as if the Government have decided that the best way to get their own way is to frighten or bully the public into agreement, rather than fulfilling their own criteria for any decision. Indeed, that was reiterated somewhat by the Secretary of State's performance at the Dispatch Box today.
	The conditions that the Government have set have been overlooked and I am deeply concerned about how the expansion will play out among my constituents. As I am sure hon. Members can imagine, I have had a sizeable postbag on the matter, as many of my constituents, especially those living in the north of my constituency in Caversham, are getting a daily taste of life under the flight path. The strength of feeling about the issue cannot be ignored. Indeed, I have received many letters urging me to oppose any third runway.
	My constituents in the north of Reading already believe that they are experiencing a substantial increase in flight traffic and all the noise that comes with that. They are rightly discontented with that. I know that many hon. Members have constituencies that are much closer to Heathrow and constituents who suffer the daily torment of low-flying aircraft. My constituency is 30 miles away and yet we, too, suffer similar problems with noise and pollution.
	I have corresponded with several Ministers in the Department for Transport over the past 18 months or so. I recently wrote again to the Minister who is due to wind up this debate. His reply confirmed that Reading, East suffers from substantial air traffic noise. Indeed, I have become quite a nerd on the subject, because it has become so important to my constituents, although I shall try not to go into too much detail.
	It has been confirmed that a westerly preference for take-offs, owing to prevailing westerly winds, has been operating at Heathrow since 1962, as the airport attempts to reduce the number of departing aircraft taking off over areas to the east of the airport. That is quite sensible, because the areas to the east of the airport are more densely populated. Generally, the westerly preference operates for 70 per cent. of a typical year. An aircraft taking off towards the west is slightly less of an issue for my constituents, because departing aircraft have to follow set routes known as noise preferential routes or NPRs. When an aircraft reaches 4,000 ft, air traffic control can leave it on that NPR or put it on a more direct route to its destination. The key point, aircraft experts tell me, is that aircraft today can reach 4,000 ft pretty quickly.
	Normally, an aircraft would be above 4,000 ft by the time it reached Reading and still ascending. In those circumstances there is not really a problem. But—and it is a pretty big but—because aircraft departing to the west must have a vertical separation of 1,000 ft from arriving aircraft, which descend from the southern holding stacks for safety reasons, they have to lower their altitude until there is a clear crossing area. That basically means that aircraft have to lower their altitude at Reading for safety reasons. Many aircraft are now so low that my constituents have written to me to express their concern that they are in fact flying below 1,000 ft. I do not know whether that is true without getting out my measuring tape. It seems unlikely, but even so, it may be worth the Minister taking a look at that claim, because it could be quite dangerous if it were true.
	Matters are made much worse for my constituents when Heathrow changes to an easterly operation for 30 per cent. of the year. The Department for Transport has sent me the landing maps, which show that Reading is a blizzard of low-flying aircraft. Aircraft are held in holding stacks and then join the airport's instrument landing system. That brings aircraft much lower over my constituents. Again, the situation is not as bad as it is in the areas closer to Heathrow, but the noise makes a difference to my constituents' quality of life. Expansion will mean more noise and pollution for them, and the number of flights to and from Heathrow could rise from 480,000 a year to nearly 800,000 with a third runway. More and more people, including my constituents, will be under Heathrow's flight paths, and the effects will be intolerable. We all know that the south of England is increasingly overcrowded, particularly regarding road transport. Any expansion of Heathrow will make matters much worse. One constituent who wrote to me put it simply:
	"I feel very strongly that we cannot just keep accepting this endless expansion without question."
	In the absence of anything like a compelling case from the Government, my party has decided to oppose the building of a third runway at Heathrow, and is instead advocating high-speed rail as part of the alternative.

Michael Meacher: The debate has made it clear that there are essentially three issues before us: first, the national economic role of aviation; secondly, the impact of the third runway on the long-suffering people of west London; and, thirdly, the compatibility or otherwise of that runway with an 80 per cent. cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to which the Government are now firmly committed. I believe that on all three counts, the balance of evidence is clearly now against proceeding with the expansion.
	On the first point, the airline industry has of course staked its demand for continued expansion on the claim that it is central to the UK economy. However, it is not. No one will deny that the aviation industry has an important role, but it ranks as only the 26th largest industry in the country. It is half the size of the computer industry and, until a few months ago, just a 10th the size of banking and finance —[Laughter.] That figure will now be slightly different, but I hope that the point is still made. Far from being key to the balance of payments, as the industry often argues, it helps to create a tourism deficit of some £17 billion a year—that is what British tourists spend abroad over what visitors to Britain spend in this country.
	In addition, the UK airline industry gets a subsidy of some £10 billion a year from VAT-free tickets and planes, and tax-free fuel. That is taxpayers' money that could be far better spent on promoting sustainable transport systems, not least as a substitute for domestic, short-haul flights. In the past decade, the subsidies have been so large that they have allowed a 40 per cent. reduction in air fares at the same time as rail fares have rocketed by 70 per cent.
	The economic case for the third runway is a lot more questionable than has been made out. Indeed, that view was recently expressed in a report released in February this year by the respected consultant C.E. Delft, which argued that the official figures greatly overestimate both the number of jobs that the runway would generate and the value brought to Britain by extra business travellers.

John Gummer: What is wrong with Britain when we can never take any big decisions in a sensible manner? I happen to think that airport expansion is not—for reasons associated with climate change—the way forward. If it really is necessary to have more airport facilities, it would be sensible to do what every sensible nation has done, which is to put them somewhere where aircraft do not have to fly up and down over large numbers of people. That seems perfectly obvious to me. Why we cannot take such infrastructure decisions defeats me.
	It is depressing in the extreme to see a former Minister laugh at the idea of doing something about high-speed rail, when he used to be in charge of the railways at a time when nobody was working for the railways, and then suggest that it is somehow inappropriate to demand what every other nation in Europe has done about similar problems.
	We then heard the Secretary of State suggest that it was somehow disgraceful for Members to be against Heathrow expansion on the grounds that their constituents were affected. He sought to distinguish me from my colleagues on the basis that I had a high-minded view whereas they had a low-minded view, which seemed to me to be intolerable. It is not taking a low-minded view to say that people's constituents deserve a better quality of life than the one they will get if we go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow. I will not be distinguished from my colleagues in that way simply because I do not have a constituency interest in the matter. I have a very big interest in it, which is the interest of my children and my grandchildren—and unless we bite the bullet and face the fact of what climate change really means, we might as well give up the Climate Change Bill and all the rest of it.
	I read carefully what the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change said:
	"Only if Britain plays its part will a global deal in Copenhagen to cut emissions be possible, so far from retreating from our objectives, we should reaffirm our resolve."—[ Official Report, 16 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 935.]
	What does he then do? He goes to Copenhagen and says, "What I want you to do is to follow the British route. We are going to build a new coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth without any kind of carbon capture or sequestration. We are going to expand the airport at Stansted. We have already increased the number of airplanes there. What is more, to show our commitment to the battle against climate change, we are going to have a third runway at Heathrow." What kind of leadership is Britain going to be able to provide in Copenhagen if the Government fail to understand that joined-up thinking is a necessary part of fighting climate change?
	The truth of the matter is that we have a real opportunity at this moment to set the world on the right course. It is no good wittering on about the fact that this or that country has not done it, so until they do, we are not going to do it. We did not win the battle of the industrial revolution by saying, "We are not going forward with industrialisation until they have."
	In the new green revolution, we have to take these decisions for the economic future of our country. I remind the Secretary of State that the quality of life report was written by someone who did not have a constituency reason for writing it and he did so at the point at which the Conservative party took the ideas on board—not for short-term local constituency reasons, but for the longer-term reason that we cannot cut our emissions by 80 per cent. by 2050 and build a third runway at Heathrow at the same time. We simply cannot do that.
	The Secretary of State's problem is simple. He must recognise that there comes a moment in the life of any politician—it is a very frightening moment—when he has to think about how he is going to tell his grandchildren about the decision he made. This right hon. Gentleman is truly a right hon. Gentleman; if he does not have grandchildren, there are many surrogates to help him. He is a right hon. Gentleman and he knows very well that it is not honourable to do in the short term what he knows will destroy the policy of this and any other future Government of this country in the long term. The building of a third runway at Heathrow will make any possibility of Britain leading the world on climate change absolutely impossible. To suggest that we would replace present capacity by means of a sensibly placed airport somewhere in the estuary is reasonable, but a replacement is what it must be.
	People speak with forked tongue, if that is not a unparliamentary phrase, when they say—as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said—that we are not talking about expansion while asking, as he did, for more airport capacity to allow flights to Bangalore, Osaka and other such cities. It cannot be said that this is merely a matter of "tidying up" the airport; the intention is to expand the airport, to allow more flights, to increase emissions, and to make it more difficult for people to live nearby. That is the purpose of this proposal.
	What is more, as the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) pointed out, the same arguments will emerge next time. I have been in the House for a long time, and I have heard them all before. I have heard it said that we must have a fourth terminal, we must have a fifth terminal and we must have more capacity, because otherwise Heathrow will collapse, the British economy will collapse, and the world will collapse. That is not true, and the figures have to be fiddled to make that argument appear true. I realise that every time I look at the figures, and I hope that the Secretary of State will be honourable enough to look at them again.
	First, a calculation must be made on the basis that the airport is a place where people come in and go out. To make the figures work it is necessary to include both the number coming in and the number going out, but that is not what is actually happening: only one movement is involved. It is possible to halve the percentages, which is supposed to be so important, merely by getting the figures right. Then there is the comparison with rail travel. It is 13 times as sensible to travel to Paris by rail as to fly there, but the only way in which to contradict that statistic is to pretend that no one is on the train and everyone is on the aeroplane. If a full aeroplane of the most efficient kind is compared with a train containing one person in each carriage, it can indeed be proved that the aeroplane is more efficient. That is not a true representation of what is happening, but it is what must be done. The Government stand accused of being prepared to use any figures that are around to prove a case on which they have already decided.
	That leads me to the subject of the consultation, and, indeed, to the speech of the Secretary of State. Let me say frankly to him that it is not acceptable to turn to the House and argue that because the Government have met the requirements of 2003—even if they have not—the case has somehow been proved. The case that the Secretary of State must answer is this: how does he explain the expansion of Heathrow in terms of the commitments on climate change that are being considered at this moment in both Houses of Parliament? How does he explain the expansion of Heathrow in terms of what will be the 2009 Copenhagen statement? What will the Secretary of State tell the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that he should say when he goes to Copenhagen? I have written one or two speeches in my time, but I would not like to try to write that speech. What is more, I do not think that he would accept it.

Martin Salter: It is a genuine privilege to follow the passionate contribution of the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), although he made many of the points that I had intended to make about the credibility, or potential lack of credibility, of the United Kingdom's position at Copenhagen. I strongly endorse what he said about political leadership, and—I say this in as comradely a spirit as possible—I regret the tone of the Secretary of State's opening speech.
	This has been an emotional debate, and I think it right and proper for Members to stand up for their constituents' interests in the House, because we are first and foremost constituency Members of Parliament. I pay tribute to the strong contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen) and, in particular, from the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall). Their constituencies stand to be devastated by the consequences of proceeding with the third Heathrow runway.
	I, too, have an emotional attachment to Heathrow. As I said in an intervention earlier, I was born in Bedfont, and many members of my family worked at Heathrow airport. For a number of years I was a cargo handler and union steward at Heathrow, and I know the area well. I know how important the airport is to the local economy; I know how an airport can drive a local economy, and how vital it can be to jobs. I know how much support Labour Members have from many of our colleagues who represent constituents containing regional airports that would have the potential to expand if Heathrow were not seen as the be-all and end-all of British aviation policy.
	I also speak as a signatory to early-day motion 2344, and, until I am told otherwise, as vice-chair of the of the Labour party group on the environment.
	Let me deal with the point about political leadership. I think I know where the majority of members of my party stand on this issue. I think I know how proud we all are—with the exception of a few right-wing nutcases on the Opposition Benches—of the letters that we are receiving from members of the public, from members of the World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Earth, congratulating us on voting through the world's first climate change Bill. We take the advantages, and we take the praise and the plaudits, but we must not abuse that by negating much of the good work that we have done in this Chamber over previous months.
	The arguments in favour of a third runway are fundamentally flawed on three counts: the environment, surface access, and the organisation of Heathrow itself. There were clear commitments in the aviation White Paper on surface access and the environmental consequences. I want to read into the record the following passage:
	"To tackle local impacts around airports, the White Paper prescribes a range of measures to be applied nationally and locally. These include new legislation and economic instruments as well as improved technology and stringent planning conditions attached to airport development. The Government's under-pinning objectives are to limit and, where possible, reduce noise impacts over time, to ensure air quality and other environmental standards are met, and to minimise other local environmental impacts."
	On surface access, the White Paper stated:
	"Increasing the proportion of passengers who get to airports by public transport can help reduce road congestion and air pollution. We expect airport operators to share this objective, and to demonstrate how they will achieve it in putting forward their proposals for developing new capacity."
	Let us consider surface access. I represent a constituency that is some 25 miles from Heathrow airport. I was a member of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the late 1990s, and Committee members regularly caught the 9.05 flight to Belfast. To arrive at Heathrow on time, I would leave my house for what was a 25-minute journey at just before six o'clock in the morning, because that was the only way to beat the gridlock on the M4. Why did I not take public transport? There is a public transport link, I suppose, if I want to travel 60 miles by journeying 40 miles into London and then 20 miles back out again.
	The former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), talked about Crossrail and the opportunities it provides, but the big flaw with Crossrail is that there is no western rail access into Heathrow. I work closely with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and with the Thames Valley Economic Partnership. It represents the six major corporates in the Thames valley, which is the hub of the dynamic sub-regional economy; 23,500 jobs depend on those six corporates alone, and last year they spent upwards of £12 million on taxi fares running clients backwards and forwards from Heathrow because there is no sensible public transport surface access from the Thames valley. That is complete nonsense.
	The White Paper gave the commitment that surface access must improve as a precondition of expanding the airport, but years later there is precious little evidence that we will see anything tangible. Before anyone cites Airtrack in reply, let me say that Airtrack is a slow route, and that it will not deliver what business needs by providing fast, efficient transport into London Heathrow from the west.

Martin Salter: I was not aware of the precise figures, but it would be fair to say that millions and millions of pounds are lost to business and the UK economy every day of the year because of gridlock in and around London Heathrow airport. One can only imagine how much worse the situation will get if we increase capacity by up to 50 per cent.
	The Secretary of State said the reason we are not hitting European air quality targets now is because of traffic and exhaust emissions. That will not wash. If we know that there will be a massive increase in exhaust emissions because of increasing capacity at Heathrow, how much further away will we be from delivering on our 2003 promise to comply with internationally agreed air quality targets? That is why the Government are already looking at a derogation from the 2015 directive.
	There are wider issues as well. There was talk of noise. I do not want to get into detailed discussion of the topic, but I remember as a youngster seeing people run screaming into their house when prop-engine planes such as Comets and Viscounts came so low over the roofs that eventually people could not take it any more—they had had enough. Living under a flight path is stressful. I am sure that is why I have a loud voice. Irrespective of property prices, we must think about quality of life.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen) talked about the contribution airport workers have made to the success of Heathrow airport, and that is true, but this is not about just getting a night's sleep. There are probably more workers working shift patterns around Heathrow airport than anywhere else. Any increase in numbers of flights and noise at any time of the day will disadvantage communities and family life and ruin the quality of life for many people.
	I have looked at the figures for flights in and out of London Heathrow. The last set I saw showed that about 475,000 flights use Heathrow each year, but some 100,000 are to destinations to which there are alternative means of travel, and about 100,000 are some of the short-haul hops that I suggest are not vital to sustain Heathrow airport as the nub of the sub-regional economy. Therefore, the argument that we need a better, rather than a bigger, Heathrow gains credence from these figures.

Martin Salter: I would like to apologise to the House for giving way to that intervention. The Government have clearly made no decision. I am a loyal member of the parliamentary Labour party, and I hold in my hand its briefing. It clearly says—it is the job of Back-Bench MPs to read this into the record—that:
	"No decisions on Heathrow have yet been taken",
	so Members can proceed with this debate with a degree of confidence. It also says:
	"Since the 2003 Air Transport White Paper, the Government has been clear that it supports the economic case for a third runway at Heathrow, subject to being confident of meeting strict local environmental conditions on noise, air quality and surface access."
	There is a way for the Government to get off this hook. There is a way where they do not have to cede the economic argument—which does exist, and I have not attempted to take it apart today—about the importance of Heathrow and the need for it to expand. Their previous statements made it clear that the environmental and access considerations would be paramount. Those preconditions have not been met. We also know that technology is advancing—BAA makes that case—and there may well come a point when air travel is not so environmentally damaging and does not produce as many emissions as at present. As technology advances and aircraft are manufactured that are capable of carrying more people around with fewer flight movements and less disruption, there may be a case for a third runway at some point in the future.
	At this stage, however, why does the Secretary of State not sign up to the following three simple principles? First, there will be no expansion of Heathrow airport and no third runway without a vote in this House. Secondly, until we are able to take advantage of advancing technology to address the emissions issues, there will be no decision on a third runway. Thirdly, will the Secretary of State stick to the promise that was solemnly made in the 2003 aviation White Paper that until we resolve the all-important and overarching environmental issues, we will not proceed with a third runway at London Heathrow airport?

Nick Hurd: It has been a depressing afternoon, and not solely for that reason.
	The Government appear to have made their mind up, despite evidence that the social cost will be enormous in Hillingdon, in Hayes and Harlington and across west London. Their sensitivity to this issue is reflected in the fact that although they pride themselves in carrying out the most "comprehensive" consultation—I think that was the adjective used by the Secretary of State—we are yet to be given an assessment of the health impact, which is probably one of the biggest issues for my constituents, and an equality assessment, which is also important. A health impact assessment is not considered important enough to be in the mix to help us with this decision and this debate.
	The environmental cost has been touched on late in the debate, and I wish to say a word about it. Although we take pride in the process of the Climate Change Bill, in which I was heavily engaged, we remain in the business of setting and monitoring targets, and the mechanics of all that. It is time for an "emperor's new clothes" moment, because we are failing and our emissions are rising. We are failing not only in this country, but across Europe. We have raised the bar to 80 per cent on emissions, but in the context of failure, we must acknowledge that the transport sector is the most stubborn one, and that within it, aviation is the fastest-growing source of emissions.
	The problem is that we will not get help from technology. Whereas we can just about see that car technology is on the brink of major change and that our children and grandchildren will drive something very different, fuelled by something very different, from what we drive, aviation is not the same, because we cannot see an alternative to kerosene. The fact that stock takes 20 years to pass through the system means that no technological solution is in sight, which gives us big policy challenges in managing this problem and in the degree to which we are prepared to manage demand. The Government have done really well on climate change on so many levels, but there has been a failure in their response in this area, because they are prepared to place just one chip on the table—emissions trading. That is so despite the evidence, which suggests that emissions trading, for the time that we have had it, has improved the mechanics of how the process works, but has been a failure in doing what it is meant to do, which is to reduce emissions. It has been a failure because there is so much political risk in the process; it is a haggle and a negotiation. It is a cap-and-trade scheme that is only as good as the cap, and that is the function of a political process.
	For the Secretary of State to stand up and say that things are going to be all right because the emissions trading scheme will sort them all out is not good enough. The Commission has set out its stall on the parameters and the kind of cap that it is imagining. It is quite demanding and there will be costs to consumers, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the industry will pass them on to our constituents. The price of flying will rise, as will the price of carbon credits, because aviation will start trying to buy them in the market, and that will have implications for other industries. The point is that the negotiation process has not even started yet. The mother of all lobbies is about to be unleashed and it will take real political courage, which I do not see as evident either here or on the continent, to assure us that the cap will be set at a meaningful level to help genuinely curb the growth in aviation emissions.
	The Government can slap themselves on the back for everything that they have done on climate change, and they can talk about how they are prepared to consider aviation within the targets, but it counts for nothing in the minds of our constituents when set against the decision to give a green light to the fastest-growing source of emissions. People simply do not understand that decision, and it makes a mockery of the whole climate change strategy.
	In that context, there needs to be a fantastic overwhelming business case for taking such a decision—but there is not one. The case being made is pathetic. Even the advocates put forward only a small number of benefits, and the Government have not even bothered to do their own work. We hear long lectures about the importance of the hub model, without any reflection about whether that is the economic model that will survive for the next 10 or 15 years. My constituents do not understand what the national economic benefit is of a passenger arriving and then sitting in Heathrow airport waiting to catch another plane—although they can see the benefits to BAA. We are given a long solemn list of destinations that have been cancelled, but what my constituents and I are saying is, "Help us to understand just how important it is." Where is the Government modelling to help us understand the erosion of the hub and when it will bite in terms of affecting our competitiveness? Again there has been silence, and no evidence has been provided.
	One thing that does matter in terms of the economic case is foreign direct investment, and whether companies will change decisions about whether to relocate in the UK in the light of the capacity of Heathrow. What matters is whether they will relocate because they cannot fly to where they want—but where is the evidence to suggest that that is happening? Other airports on the continent have grown during a period of fantastic prosperity for London, so where is the evidence that we face an abyss in terms of this business risk? We all know that the airport is not the only factor in business decisions. Many other factors shape business attitudes towards staying or locating in London, such as the tax environment, the regulatory environment and the quality of life. It is ironic, but many business executives are thinking about relocating their business because of the impact of noise pollution from Heathrow, let alone concerns about where they can or cannot fly.
	The voice of business that I hear does not say, "I can't get to where I want to go." It says, "Heathrow is a terrible airport, with an awful passenger experience." People want a better airport, not necessarily a bigger airport. In the light of that, we are forced to conclude that the Government's decision is rooted in the worst possible reasons, and is politically motivated. We can be confident in that judgment, because we had the most ridiculous political and partisan speech from the Secretary of State, which did neither his Department nor himself any credit. The decision is based on inadequate data, a discredited consultation process and a tremendous insensitivity to the reality of the climate change agenda, and it drives another nail into the coffin of public trust in our public institutions and the way in which we are governed. We have to be able to do better. I wholly support the call from the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington to step back and rethink.

Graham Stringer: No, I have given way twice.
	That is the detailed side of the argument, and there has to be a debate about those issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said that this had become an iconic issue. I agree. It is iconic: it is symbolic of the role of aviation in the economy and the environment.
	The aviation industry makes a relatively small contribution to global warming. The figures given vary between 2, 3, 4 and 6 per cent., so it is increasing, and it is said that it will reach a certain level in 50 years' time. I do not trust any politician—because I have yet to meet a politician who can do differential equations—who talks about rates of change over a 42-year period. That is another absurdity. People say, "This will happen." And yet when it comes to the economy, we do not know what will happen next week.
	Aviation has become symbolic because of the way in which it is modern. We do not see the same level of savage attacks on the contribution to global warming made by the computers and services that are necessary to make the internet work. Those factors make a huge contribution to it, but we do not talk about it. I talked to the people who opposed the second runway in Manchester on many occasions, and when we went through all the improvements to the environment and all the damage that the 2 miles of concrete would do, I came to the conclusion that we were having a symbolic debate about the future of society in which it was not possible to convince people that aviation and modern technology was the way forward. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will bear that in mind.
	I do not think that the alternatives that have been proposed are realistic. Let us take as an example the proposal to build an airport out on the Thames estuary, with all the extra infrastructure and costs that that would require. My guess is that even without the airport, changing the roads, the railway tracks and the access routes would make a much greater contribution to global warming and greenhouse gases than anything else in the package. It took 25 years to build the new Munich airport, at a time when environmental standards were less stringent. Quite simply, the Thames estuary airport is not going to happen. It is on the agenda only because it was the Mayor of London who decided Opposition policy—in the interests not of the country, or even of the Conservative party, but because he wanted votes in west London so that he would win the mayoral election. It was as simple as that, and the Conservative party should be ashamed of itself for allowing its policy to be tweaked like that during the mayoral election.
	I shall finish by making two points. Some people say that we cannot meet our climate change objectives but, even though such things are very difficult to predict, restricting Heathrow expansion is not the same as restricting emissions. We will merely be exporting them, just as we will be exporting jobs, and those emissions will come instead from Copenhagen, Schiphol or somewhere else. We will not make a contribution to the environment in that way.
	I shall conclude by stating that I agree with some of my hon. Friends that we should not be in this position. It is absolutely extraordinary that only one new runway has been built in this country over the past 60 years or so, and we are suffering as a result. The Department for Transport, under different Governments, has seen BA and BAA as clients, even after privatisation. Because of that, it has not looked after the country's interest; instead, it has been advising those companies and looking after their interests. That is why complaints that I consider to be completely reasonable have been made about the commitments that have been made to the effect that there would be no third runway or fifth terminal.
	Those commitments were wrong. If this country is to make its way in the world economically, it needs a hub airport. I wish that that airport could be in Manchester, but it can really only be in west London. The hub is not going to be transferred. Had the people who planned it known what was going to happen in the 60 years since it was built, they would not have put it where they did, but it is where it is, this country needs it—and needs it to expand.

Justine Greening: Today's debate is not just about the future of Heathrow airport—whether it should get a third runway or whether we should introduce mixed mode—because we are talking about a judgment that will have a real and profound consequence for millions of Londoners. On Ministers' judgment will depend Londoners' day-to-day quality of life and, for some, even their health. I believe that people have a right to expect a reasonable quality of life, and that it is the Government's duty to respect that right and to protect public health.
	The Government have given the House the fantastical assurance that adding an airport the size of Gatwick on to Heathrow will somehow make it less noisy and polluting. Ministers assure us that Heathrow is a hub and that London's economy will be irrevocably damaged and threatened without expansion. However, neither case has been made, and I believe that Ministers are about to take a deeply reckless decision for whose consequences they will never be held personally accountable.
	Right at the beginning, the Government set important tests in the White Paper on noise and, in particular, on air quality. They assured people that they would "bear down" on noise and meet EU air pollution limits but, as we have heard, on air pollution the simple fact is that the UK is already set to breach the EU's 2010 mandatory limits on NOx levels, and that is even before any extra flights are added.
	This afternoon, the Secretary of State admitted that our country will have to apply for a three or five-year derogation when it comes to meeting the EU pollution limits. How on earth, then, can the Government consider expanding Heathrow, given that that would mean an even greater rise in NOx emissions? It simply defies common sense—nearly as much as do the fantasy planes that my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) mentioned and which have been included in some of the modelling that the Department for Transport claims proves that the proposal to expand Heathrow is possible.
	Suspension of disbelief seems to be a common thread in the Government's attitude to the environmental case for expanding Heathrow. Let us take the subject of noise. The "Attitudes to Noise from Aviation Sources in England" report, compiled by experts and commissioned by the Government, which took six years to complete, said that people were more sensitive to noise now than in the past, which undermines the historical 57 dB limit used by the Government. The Government simply ignored that report.
	My constituents will lose the half-day respite from aircraft noise that they so value. It is a crucial balance that all previous Governments have appreciated, yet the value of that half day does not feature anywhere in the economic case that the Government considered. All-day flights will make life in parts of London intolerable. Families and many other residents will simply want to leave.
	The increased pollution will come not just from more planes in the sky, but from more cars on the road—a lot more cars. The expanded Heathrow will handle more than 60 million more passengers. That will mean around 40 million more people travelling to and from the airport, the majority of whom will be on the roads. As we have heard, that raises the nightmarish prospect of a serious deterioration in air quality, with major health implications, chaos on London's roads, and a gridlocked M4 that will grind to a halt more often than it already does. West London businesses and residents will face traffic hell. More planes, more cars, more pollution, more noise, a ruined quality of life—the environmental case for expansion simply does not stack up, and neither does the economic case.
	As we have heard, the Government's own figures say that the net present value of the economic benefit is £5 billion. That includes £3 billion of extra air passenger duty, but we would be hard pressed to find anyone in finance who would say that tax should be counted as an economic benefit. Of course, if we included the full costs of the extra missing emissions for CO2, it would add an extra £5 billion cost, which would give the project a negative net present value; we all know that that is the reality.
	Of course, all the so-called key evidence on adding capacity has been generated by the Department for Transport and BAA, which, unlike the rest of us, seems to have had unfettered access to the process. I am afraid that throughout that process, Ministers have not been frank with Members of this House or with the public about the information that they have looked at, on which they based their decisions. When I have tried to get information, whether through parliamentary questions or freedom of information requests, so that we could have a level playing field, at every stage I have met with resistance. I have made freedom of information requests to which it has taken seven months to get an initial substantive response.
	I was not the only one who was denied access to information. The Environment Agency was given no access to the detailed fact base that the Department for Transport had considered, so it is no wonder that the Environment Agency reached the chilling conclusion that there was a risk of increased morbidity and mortality if the Government went ahead with this reckless plan. Even the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was kept out of the loop when it came to the environment. The DFT compiled its own assessment of the risk of expansion, called the risk register, yet when I met the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, he was blissfully unaware of the existence of the document, let alone its contents.
	The risk register states that the risk of pollution mitigation measures failing to meet air quality targets is high, but did Ministers make sure that DEFRA was aware of that? No. Did Ministers make sure that that "high risk" assessment, made back in October, got into the public consultation document, so that the public and businesses were aware of the risk assessment and the dangers? No. We should put that "high risk" assessment of pollution mitigation measures failing into context: the same team that assessed that risk as high also considered the risk of terminal 5 being a botch job, leading to reputational damage. I am sure that hon. Members will be amazed to hear that the risk attached to that was low. Of course, we all know what actually happened. The Government have shown that they did not foresee the risk of national disgrace and embarrassment in the case of terminal 5, yet we are about to walk headlong into another disgraceful risk. However, the outcomes could be far worse, and irreversible.
	Concealing information and ignoring risks are all just part of the Government's consistently disingenuous attitude towards engaging with the public. That has pervaded all levels of the consultation process. At every stage of the modelling process, the Government's approach can best be described as "How can we fix the data to support our policy, and how can we twist the facts to get the result we want?"
	Let me give the House a couple of examples of the discussion. On tackling air pollution, a DFT airmail on 28 March 2007 summarised the conclusions of a departmental meeting:
	"Moving the source"—
	the pollution—
	"away from the receptor is the most effective mitigation".
	In other words, let us just have the pollution, but nowhere near places where it can be monitored.
	A Heathrow project board meeting minute of 16 April 2007 noted:
	"It was clear that moving NOx away from areas of exceedence was the most effective mitigation".
	Translation: "Don't worry about reducing pollution—just move it away from measuring equipment, and spread it out a bit so that it doesn't show up too much." Most compellingly, an e-mail from the DFT on 10 August 2007 hit the nail on the head:
	"It looked like a hunt for a model—any model"
	that would give a green light. That is self-explanatory. It was never a hunt for the reality of what Heathrow expansion would do to the environment—that never entered the Government's thinking—but a hunt for a model to get the right answer. One team member was reported as saying:
	"It was a classic case of reverse engineering—it was awful."
	I agree.

Greg Hands: It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. We have heard some high-quality contributions in which the common factor, in almost every case, has been opposition to the expansion of Heathrow; in fact, I have heard only one Back-Bench speech in favour. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews)—if there were a vote on the proposal, I would very much expect it to be defeated.
	I have always been a pragmatist as regards Heathrow. I am not necessarily opposed to its expansion, but I would always look to see whether the net overall effect on the environment was neutral or positive before supporting that proposal. I used to be an admirer of BAA. In the early 1990s, I used to fly an awful lot, transatlantically and domestically within the United States, and I was always impressed by how BAA managed its airports and its customers. Regrettably, those days are long gone. For me, the fading gold and black graphics in BAA airports sum up what has happened to the company: it has not really achieved anything since its great heyday in the early '90s.
	Heathrow brings some benefits to my constituency—I have met quite a few constituents who work at the airport; my constituents use it a great deal for the purposes of air travel; and one of the reasons why Hammersmith and Fulham has been attractive to businesses over the years is its location between Heathrow airport and central London. Nevertheless, the airport has become a major issue in my constituency, but I try to approach the whole question rationally. However, having considered all the benefits and disbenefits, I have come to believe that, on balance, the current set of proposals is most detrimental to my constituency.
	My local council is awaiting the result of the official consultation, but it decided to send out its own consultation document. So far, some 4,000 residents have responded. Incredibly, 93 per cent. of those responses are against expansion. Only 6 per cent. are in favour, with a mere 1 per cent. undecided. I praise my local council, which had a change of policy when the Conservatives took over in 2006. It joined the 2M group and became very active in campaigning against Heathrow expansion.
	The proposals would have seven main effects on my constituency: extra flights, new flight paths overhead, noise pollution, air pollution, safety implications, night flights and the impact of a larger Heathrow on public and private transport in west London. On extra flights, the case has already been made. There is talk of an increase to 480,000 or 500,000, or perhaps to 700,000.
	On new flight paths, in Fulham, where both flight paths go over, the loss of runway alternation on the two existing runways would mean aircraft coming in overhead for a much longer part of the day, as there would be no changeover at 3 pm. Aircraft could join the new approach flight path for the third runway over Fulham. Because of the reduced length of the third runway, it is likely that most of the bigger, noisier planes would come in over Fulham using the existing full-length runways. In Hammersmith, which is not currently directly under either flight path, the approach to the third runway would add hugely to noise there, with perhaps an aircraft every 90 seconds or so. That would impact on people who generally are not directly affected by aircraft noise. The ending of runway alternation together with the addition of the third runway, or even their separate use, would be a total disaster for my constituents. Families living below would endure noise for 18 hours a day rather than nine, as at present.
	On noise pollution, an estimated 1 million people live, work and go to school in west London and the Heathrow area, and they are already exposed to noise levels that are above the limits for annoyance laid down by the World Health Organisation. Research shows that noise pollution from planes dominates areas up to 13 miles away from Heathrow, which would include Hammersmith and Fulham.
	On air pollution, we have already heard that Government are in breach of the air quality laws and have been threatened with fines by the European Commission. Indeed, there was an article in today's edition of the  Evening Standard about the Commission becoming active and interested in the subject again.
	I am genuinely worried for my children, and my constituents' children, who have to live in an environment where the air quality is as poor as it is in London. London has the highest annual average level of nitrogen dioxide of any capital city, not only in western Europe, but eastern Europe as well. An increase in air movement would inevitably be disastrous for our air quality.
	The Government say that extra aircraft and road traffic will not necessarily prevent them from meeting their air quality targets around the airport. But that is because they have assumed that a new generation of aircraft will be cleaner than those currently flying and that road vehicles will be far less polluting. If technological improvements in engine design and fuels are not as successful as the Government hope, pollution levels will be higher in the immediate vicinity of the airport, and further afield, including in Hammersmith and Fulham. If the Government are wrong, the health and life expectancy of people all over west London will suffer.
	On safety, although Heathrow has a very good safety record, increasing the number of take-offs and landings over such densely populated areas can only increase the risk of a serious accident, especially when London already has some of the most complex airspace in the world. It is a bizarre system that has thousands of planes flying directly over this country's largest conurbation and some of its most densely populated areas.
	The issue of night flights is ongoing, despite the Government having agreed to extend the cap until 2012. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) and I had a meeting with British Airways a couple of years ago, where it tried to explain why it needed night flights. It all related to the convenience of passengers, particularly those boarding planes in places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, who had to board a plane before midnight. If they could not arrive at 4, 5 or 6 am, they would have to arrive at 7 or 8 am, which would mean boarding a plane in Singapore or Hong Kong after midnight. That is clearly an inconvenience, but we are talking about having a sense of balance and proportion. We have to weigh up the convenience of those few hundred thousand passengers who board planes in Hong Kong or Singapore against the convenience of the millions of people under flight paths in west London or places such as Windsor. The Government have got it entirely wrong.
	On public and private transport in west London, it seems incredible that the Government might be proposing an increase in capacity at Heathrow without considering an increase in capacity in our public transport links. Earlier this year, I had a meeting with the managers of the Piccadilly line in which I tried to lobby them to have the line stop at Ravenscourt Park and/or Stamford Brook in my constituency. I was persuaded that there was a strong argument against my proposal, partly because of capacity on the Piccadilly line, the usage of which has gone up enormously since the millennium—about a 50 per cent. increase, with the line now running at 97 per cent. of capacity. That has occurred despite the introduction of the Heathrow Express, which might have been expected to relieve the Piccadilly line to some extent. We have to do something about public and private transport provision because there will be a detrimental impact on the working lives of my constituents who are trying to board the Piccadilly line if it is already full. I represent more tube passengers than any other Member of Parliament.
	Finally, on some of the solutions, I agree with the approach of considering high-speed rail. Every year or so I buy the "Thomas Cook European Railway Timetable". That is not because I am a trainspotter, but because I genuinely love going by rail. Every year I see in the map at the front of the book the expanding network of high-speed rail lines going through other countries, such as France, Spain and Germany. High-speed rail is very much the future for this country. I commend our policy on that, and I am very much opposed to the proposals on Heathrow expansion.

Andrew Slaughter: To revert to an earlier theme, I am not embarrassed to represent my constituents on the matter that we are discussing. Indeed, I would be embarrassed not to do so. More than 1,000 of my constituents in W4 attended a meeting in Chiswick earlier this year to protest as part of the consultation, and more than 800 of my current and prospective constituents in W12 and W6 attended a meeting at Hammersmith town hall, at which I spoke.
	I have received literally thousands of e-mails and letters on the subject and I cannot recall one of them being in favour of the expansion of Heathrow—and, with the exception of correspondence from the Mayor of London, I cannot recall one of them calling for the closure of Heathrow. Although those people are angry, their requests are reasonable and I hope that the Government will listen to them. They essentially ask the Government to think again about the proposal to expand Heathrow and, before making a decision, to reconsider the out-of-date and unreliable information on which they currently propose to act.
	As for the Government, little appears to have changed since the 2003 White Paper on the subject, yet, on the ground, almost everything has changed. Environmental concerns and policy, and planning policy have changed, the ownership of the London airports is in the process of changing and, thanks to the Competition Commission report, the BAA monopoly will be broken. Not only the economic climate, but the challenges to the economic case for Heathrow expansion have changed. Politics have also changed. By that, I do not simply mean the Conservative party's volte face, which, although welcome as far as it goes, is expressed in shallow and rather questionable terms. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), I mean the absolute groundswell across not only west London but a much wider area, and a coalition of interest that has not been seen previously, which challenges Government policy on the matter.
	Given the time available, I hope that I shall not repeat points that have already been made, but I will make a couple of points about the harm that the proposal would cause my constituents and others in west London. A good article in  The Economist last week states that,
	"Heathrow makes more people miserable than just about any other big developed-country airport."
	That is true not just because of air quality and noise, which have been covered at length. Thousands of people in Chiswick, Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush have not experienced those problems to a great extent, but will suffer from them significantly and continually if the third runway is built.
	The Piccadilly line has been mentioned. I recently had a meeting with London Underground, after it wrote to me about reconfiguring its services on the Piccadilly line. We all know what that means. As it explained to me, it means longer gaps between trains to fulfil timetable commitments. On interrogation, it became clear that that is partly due to the current expansion of Heathrow—too many people already use the Piccadilly line. Yet we read in one of the briefings that was sent to us today that, although capacity on the Piccadilly line will increase by 20 per cent. by 2015, the consultation document on Heathrow claims that expansion requires a 39 per cent. increase on the London underground, making the current position untenable.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) spoke about the problems of surface access. That is true of not only the M4 but local road networks across west London. Anybody who tries to drive around Shepherd's Bush since the opening of the Westfield shopping centre will find that there is no room for major infrastructure developments on the current road network in west London. Contrary to what my local councillors seem to think, with their grandiose schemes for commercial development, the capacity simply does not exist in that area.
	Alternatives to Heathrow have not been properly examined. We have heard that growth in aircraft size will effectively expand the capacity within existing planning constraints by 30 per cent. by 2030, yet that does not appear to be enough for BAA, BA and other large airlines. A broad coalition includes people from extreme unrepentant environmentalists to those who would be perfectly prepared to countenance airport expansion, but believe that, if airports in the south-east are to be expanded, Heathrow is the last airport one would consider for such expansion. Again, I quote the article in  The Economist:
	"Expanding Gatwick is not without difficulties, but these are trivial compared with those at Heathrow."
	Why on earth would we look to Heathrow for the major expansion of airport provision in the south-east, given its position and the misery that it causes in a predominantly built-up area?
	There is some capacity in high-speed rail, but the Conservatives do themselves a disservice by saying that their plan to build a high-speed link to Leeds-Bradford would solve the problems of Heathrow expansion, when it would in fact take no more than 3 per cent. of current capacity out of the equation. Let us try to be realistic. We should work in a cross-party fashion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington suggested, but that is simply not happening.
	London is a five-airport city that, on current planning constraints, has the potential to go from 137 million passengers to 210 million by 2030 without the planned additional runway. The comparisons that the Government have made with hub airports on the continent do not stack up. There is no airport in a similar location to Heathrow or with the same number of charter and low-cost flights, which could be more appropriately directed elsewhere. I do not believe that the argument about transfer passengers stands up to scrutiny in the long term either, when so many people prefer to take direct flights from regional or other London airports.
	This has been a good debate, with the exception, I am afraid to say, of the contributions from those on the Government and official Opposition Front Benches. The Conservatives have performed an extraordinary volte-face over the past couple of months, standing the policy that they have supported for so long on its head.  [ Interruption. ] I see Opposition Members shaking their heads, but exactly a year ago the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) said:
	"We recognise that the economic arguments for expanding Heathrow are much stronger than any other airport in the south-east".
	Talking to a west London audience on "Any Questions?" earlier this year, the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) said:
	"there is an economic need for more airport capacity...somewhere in the South East".
	When asked whether that meant Heathrow, he said:
	"although I recognise this will not be welcome by this audience we have to accept that...things sometimes have to happen that people don't wish."
	If the Conservative party has sincerely converted, we need more than the rather trivial examples that we have seen so far or the Mayor of London's bizarre proposal, which his party leader has rejected.
	I make similar criticisms of those on my own Front Bench. I did not feel from what the Secretary of State said in opening the debate that he had been listening to MPs from west London or elsewhere. In the light of the wholly changed circumstances over the past five years, I hope that in responding to the debate, the aviation Minister will indicate that the door is open at least to looking again at both the risks and the prospects if Heathrow expansion does not go ahead. What is to be lost by reviewing this mad proposal for expansion at Heathrow—particularly in the light of the Government's now excellent environmental credentials—which would cause misery and extraordinary inconvenience to thousands of people in west London, particularly my constituents?

Bernard Jenkin: I gather that the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter) is a regular sparring partner with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands), who spoke before him. The hon. Gentleman led Hammersmith and Fulham council and my hon. Friend led the opposition, but such is the proposal that the Government are likely to table that they are now making common cause. The Secretary of State is to be congratulated on bringing together this Molotov-Ribbentrop-style pact across the Chamber against his proposal. What is motivating this atmosphere of reconciliation in the House? First, I sense that there is an atmosphere of betrayal—that is a theme that I draw out of the debate. Betrayals have happened over many years, but it is now a betrayal over alternative runways and the third runway at London Heathrow. That is where I come into the debate.
	As a callow youth in the early 1980s, just down from university, I was elected to Matching parish council during the public inquiry on Stansted. The outcome was that we were promised a cap of 15 million passengers per year. As time has passed, that assurance has been betrayed, just like all the other assurances that Governments of both parties have ever made about airports policy in the south-east, to comfort their way through the planning process. We are now looking at the prospect of 35 million passengers a year—or even 65 million passengers a year—and not one but two runways at Stansted.
	This is the story that colours the development of London airports. That extraordinary industry has been built up successfully, but from cottage industry airports dotted unsatisfactorily around London. The Government now confront extraordinary choices if they wish to continue with the present policy.
	Now, as the Member of Parliament for North Essex, I represent Dedham Vale, which is already suffering the depredations of overflying from Stansted. There has already been a substantial legal case involving moving the overflights to a different part of the country, but I fear for Dedham Vale, which has been designated an area of outstanding natural beauty particularly because of its tranquillity. If Stansted is allowed to expand, the noise pollution in Dedham Vale will continue.
	The second theme of the debate that comes over strongly is that, if we had the choice, we would not start from here, and London's major hub international airport would not be where it is today. I commend the tremendous speech by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford). I do not need to repeat in the limited time available many of the things that he rightly said about the merits of reopening the consideration of a Thames estuary airport. Let me say that the debate is not necessarily about continuing the expansion of capacity, but about the creation of viable capacity and asking whether we are going to expand capacity.
	The Mayor of London's proposal has invited a certain amount of derision from some quarters in the Chamber this evening. However, I believe that he is absolutely right to help to reopen the consideration of a Thames estuary airport. He is taking the matter extremely seriously. He has done what the Government failed to do, namely to appoint a proper person to investigate the viability of the proposal. I have a copy of the Government's consideration of Thames estuary airports for the 2003 White Paper. It consists of one report, on a mere 22 pages, that considers five or six different sites. It was clearly a desktop exercise. There has never been proper consideration of many of the sites that should now be in play.
	The Mayor has appointed Doug Oakervee to conduct a preliminary inquiry. As the Secretary of State knows, he is the chairman of the Crossrail consortium. He also has an unrivalled record in airport construction. He is a civil engineer and, believe it or not, he was the project manager for the construction of Hong Kong international airport, which is on an offshore island. That was a British project. The British built Hong Kong international airport, yet the Secretary of State says that it is impossible for us to build our own island airport. Mr. Oakervee will consider all the issues, not least the possibility of a new north-south link between Kent and Essex; the opportunity to re-orient the whole development of London to the east, which successive Governments have tried for many years to do, for example through the Thames Gateway; and enabling 24-hour operation without overflying a single residence. Just think about that—not a single home will be disturbed by overflying to or from a Thames estuary airport. We should compare that to the absolute lunacy of disturbing millions of people every night as planes overfly so many residential homes near the various London airports.
	I invite the House to reflect on one final theme. What we have heard in tonight's debate is enough to confirm that the third runway at Heathrow will never happen. We have heard about the falsification of evidence designed to get the project to comply with already crumbling environmental requirements, which shows that this is nothing more than the Government parading their pro-business credentials in a very aggressive way to curry favour with certain quarters in the business community. This project will never happen.
	I see the Secretary of State in his place; he must be regretting the tone he struck in his most unfortunate speech earlier this afternoon. He must be thinking that he will not be here to see this third runway opening; he will not be where he is sitting today and he will not have the responsibilities he has now. He will not even see the first sod of earth turned on this new project, which is miles down the track. This is a pre-election exercise. My goodness, if Boris Johnson's proposal was window-dressing, what is this in comparison? I doubt that it will happen.
	Once the nail has finally been driven through the heart of this proposal and once it becomes clear that constraints on the expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted are fixed by public opinion, which does not want airport capacity so close to where people live, the proposal for a Thames estuary airport so ably floated by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich—and, perhaps not so ably, but just as vehemently by me—will move rapidly up the agenda as the only viable alternative, providing a real hub international airport to the east of London. That will be to the benefit of this country and, I believe, the whole of Europe.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister will give way if he wishes to, but I do not want that amount of noise drowning out his final remarks.

David Mundell: I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise my constituents' concerns about services, or the lack of them, at Lockerbie station. I have to say at the outset that I am extremely disappointed that after one long battle at Lockerbie station was won—with the provision of a state-of-the-art footbridge to allow disabled access to the southbound platform, after a 10-year campaign that was so ably led by Wyn Deamer of the Annandale and Eskdale Coalition for the Disabled—those who use the services at Lockerbie station or who are concerned about the economy of the south of Scotland appear no closer to a resolution of the equally long battle to ensure that the train services operated from the station meet local needs.
	These are issues that I have raised with the Minister's predecessors, most recently the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris). I have also raised them with Scottish Ministers, most recently at a meeting with Scotland's Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson on 28 October. Indeed, as far back as 20 June 1999, I sponsored one of the first Members' debates held in the Scottish Parliament—they are the equivalent of Adjournment debates in this House—in which the issue at the very heart of tonight's debate, a direct early morning service between Lockerbie and Edinburgh, was raised. Nearly 10 years on, no such service has been delivered. I contend that the introduction of the new timetable on 15 December will lead to the package of services at Lockerbie, especially between Glasgow and Edinburgh, being significantly reduced. That is totally unacceptable to me and my constituents.
	Some will wonder why the services to a station in Scotland are being debated on the Floor of the House, when transport is a matter devolved to the Scottish Parliament, but not, I am sure, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark). He will be familiar with the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998, which mean that cross-border services remain the responsibility of the Department for Transport. Lockerbie is in a unique position: although the station is within the ScotRail franchise, currently operated by First ScotRail, no services operated by First ScotRail stop there. The station is manned by ScotRail staff, and I want to use this opportunity to pay tribute to their professionalism and dedication, which is much appreciated by all my constituents who use the station.
	To reiterate, all the Lockerbie services are provided under a franchise arrangement over which Scottish Ministers have no direct control. That does not mean that they have no influence. As Stewart Stevenson points out in his letter to me of 7 November, Ministers in the Scottish Government are able to provide non-binding advice to the UK Government on such cross-border services. I will return to the advice that was given.
	I am sure the Minister will appreciate that my constituents find the complexity of the arrangements unsatisfactory. They believe that that contributes to their needs not being given the priority that they deserve. What better example than the new timetable for Lockerbie station? It is not a coherent set of services, designed to meet the needs of station users, and their oft-expressed wish for commuter services, shopping services and evening leisure services to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Instead, it is a random set of services, designed, one suspects, to tick rail industry boxes, with little thought for the customer. It is no wonder that my constituents feel that Lockerbie is a forgotten station, caught in a no-man's-land between Scottish Government and UK Government responsibilities, with nobody actually focusing on the needs of Lockerbie station users.
	It would be churlish to suggest that there are no improvements to services in the new timetable, which is to be introduced in December. The services to Manchester airport and central Manchester are to be welcomed. My son and I recently used that service, which is operated by First TransPennine Express, and it was excellent. Indeed, services to the south generally allow people relatively straightforward connections to most destinations in England and Wales. That is despite the many unwelcome changes to direct services brought about by the break up of the previous cross-country franchise, operated by Virgin Trains. I was extremely unhappy about those changes at the time, as I believed that they would adversely affect services at Lockerbie, and that has proved to be the case.
	However, whatever the issues about services to the south, I return to the point that it is services to Edinburgh and Glasgow that are of most concern to my constituents. After all, as I hope the Minister will appreciate, it is not practical for my constituents to jump in their cars and drive to the next station north, given that it is some 48 miles away. It is the longest section of railway line in Great Britain without an intermediate station. I am not proud that my constituency can boast that statistic, but the arguments for reopening the Beattock and Symington stations along the route are for another day.
	Naturally, it is also welcome that the first proposed new service of the day, the 08.15 from Lockerbie to Edinburgh, does not require a stop at Carstairs. Even my constituent, the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood), would concede that Carstairs station is not an attractive prospect on a cold and wet Scottish winter morning. However, there should never have been a need for a change there in the first place. It was another example of the interests of Lockerbie station users being compromised and, disappointingly, of Virgin not being totally transparent in its dealings with me and other local stakeholders when proposing that service, which it originally pitched as the much sought-after early morning service to Edinburgh.
	Specifically on that issue, as I have said, on numerous occasions over the past 10 years a direct early morning service to Edinburgh has been promised but never delivered. There is widespread recognition of the economic benefit of such a service, as indeed there is of a service to Glasgow, particularly in an area that has some of the lowest wages in the United Kingdom and suffers from a constant drain of young people to urban areas. In its regional transport strategy 2008 document, the South West of Scotland Transport Partnership rightly identifies the fact that such services are
	"critical to allow commuters and others to travel regularly to Scotland's economic core. This would place the region on a par with other areas of Scotland actively promoting this sort of long distance connectivity as a means to retain key workers in local communities."
	In non-binding advice to UK Ministers in October 2006 as part of the west coast main line franchising process, Scottish Ministers—then part of a Labour-Liberal Democrat Administration—recognised the importance of Lockerbie as a regional railhead for south-west Scotland, and stated their desire that the Lockerbie service should permit a journey to both Glasgow and Edinburgh, arriving no later than 08.40 and departing between 17.00 and 18.00.
	The current Scottish Government led by the Scottish National party share that view, so there is no party political element to this cause. In his letter of 7 November, Stewart Stevenson MSP states:
	"Although Scottish Ministers are unable to intervene in the detail of the current franchise arrangements between the DfT and First TransPennine Express, we can see the economic benefits of enhancing the cross border connection by providing an additional early morning, direct service to Lockerbie. This addition would provide significant benefits such as increased frequency and would in turn open up the route as a commutable journey that would improve the economic growth of both Lockerbie and the surrounding areas and for Edinburgh itself."
	Those views seem to have found favour, and at a meeting of the Lockerbie rail liaison group held in the town on 19 November 2007 at which I was present, presentations were given by both Virgin Trains and First TransPennine Express, with the impression being created that those early morning services would finally be provided with the support of the Department for Transport. That impression was reinforced in discussions I had with the then Minister, the hon. Member for Glasgow, South, earlier this year, and it seemed at the time that there would be a Lockerbie service arriving in Edinburgh at 08.32 from this December.
	Out of the blue, in the early summer, that proposal was pulled. The reason given to me was that the proposed First TransPennine Express 09.11 Edinburgh to Manchester airport service, which was to be formed from the new 08.32 arrival, could not be pathed through the border by Network Rail because of various long-standing and time-sensitive freight commitments. First TransPennine Express was unwilling to keep its train in Edinburgh until a 09.56 departure slot was available, and so, once again, the interests of Lockerbie station users were compromised. They have come at the bottom of the pecking order, marginalised to suit other interests, whether freight or TransPennine's own agenda.
	As I have said, I do not have any criticism of the services that TransPennine Express provides from Lockerbie, but let us have no more pretence that it is doing so for the convenience of Lockerbie station users or to provide the station with a balanced and logical pattern of services. Similarly, a DFT proposal for a morning Lockerbie to Glasgow service, arriving in Glasgow at 08.42, albeit with a change at Carstairs, has been dropped. The earliest that Lockerbie passengers, after the introduction of the new timetable, will arrive in Glasgow is 09.09—11 minutes later than at present. It is no wonder my constituents feel let down and simply ignored by the DFT. Their views have been ignored and their interests marginalised, and I am calling on the Minister to undertake to right those wrongs and to deliver those desperately needed, direct early morning services as soon as is practicable, and for once to put the interests of Lockerbie station users and the economy of the south of Scotland before the agendas and interests of bureaucrats, train operating companies and the wider rail industry.
	The strength of feeling about the failure to deliver the early morning services is exacerbated by the effective butchering of the existing timetable throughout the day. At present, some 15 northbound services stop at Lockerbie, eight for Glasgow and seven for Edinburgh. After the new timetable is introduced in December, it is proposed that only nine northbound services will stop at Lockerbie, four for Glasgow and five for Edinburgh. A 40 per cent. cut in services hardly represents an attempt to achieve the modal shift to rail, which is one of the Government's buzz phrases.
	Let us look at some specific examples. From the afternoon to the evening, there is an eight-hour gap between the 12.30 service to Glasgow and the proposed 20.44 service to Glasgow. From the morning to the afternoon, there is a four-and-a-half hour gap between the proposed 09.56 service to Edinburgh and the 14.30 service to Edinburgh. The 18.47 direct service to London Euston has also been removed, and the last services from Glasgow and Edinburgh are around 20.10, which makes it impossible for people to attend evening events—the theatre or other cultural activities—in Glasgow and Edinburgh and return to Lockerbie.
	What I and my constituents find particularly difficult to understand is that several services that have been cut still pass through Lockerbie, such as the 07.19, 08.20, 10.20, 11.20 and 12.20 services from Birmingham and the 12.52 from Edinburgh. They are all examples of services that, although cut from the Lockerbie timetable, still pass through the station, and I look forward to receiving the Minister's explanation. I cannot think of one. Indeed, plenty of other trains pass through Lockerbie station, and they would allow for the creation of a coherent and bespoke timetable if the will was there to do so. Again, let us hear from the Minister why such a measure seems to be impossible.
	It seems to me that Lockerbie is being discriminated against because it is on the west coast main line. Everyone welcomes the west coast main line upgrades, the faster trains and the shorter journey times, but the Department seems to have become obsessed with the importance of cutting journey times between major cities, and it looks to do so by cutting out intermediate stations rather than solely through track upgrades. That approach is to the detriment of all who live in communities such as Lockerbie, which are served by small stations, and I am sure that it is done partly to achieve competitiveness against London to Glasgow domestic flights. However, in trying to do so, the Government sacrifice the needs of areas such as Lockerbie, where people do not have the choice of local domestic flights—that is, unless Carlisle airport is reopened. And for any Department for Transport officials who are listening, I fully support its reopening.
	Lockerbie station users are not making excessive demands on the Department. As the South West of Scotland Transport Partnership says in its regional transport strategy, there ought to be a "balanced stopping pattern", and as the Scottish Government have said, it should accommodate early morning direct services to Glasgow and Edinburgh. I am sure that the Minister and his colleagues receive many complaints about train delays and cancellations, but I am also sure that he will agree that for Lockerbie station users to have to wait 10 years for early morning direct services to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and to have 40 per cent. of their daytime services cancelled permanently, is totally unacceptable. Tonight, I hope that he will take the opportunity to put that right.

Paul Clark: I congratulate the hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this debate and providing an opportunity to debate rail services at Lockerbie. I genuinely understand his comments on behalf of his constituents, yet in many of those comments are implied the competing demands of meeting the needs of the travelling public from all parts of the United Kingdom and of meeting economic demands, whether in Scotland or elsewhere. In the short time available, I hope to address some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised.
	The performance of today's railways, which have improved significantly in recent years, represents a strong success story. The focus on the punctuality and reliability of Network Rail and train operators has sharpened. Investment is at record levels and after years of managing decline, the industry is having to deal with unprecedented growth in demand for rail travel. The Government are giving high priority to providing additional capacity, through the provision of additional carriages and new infrastructure.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to the £8.8 billion that has been going into the west coast route modernisation project, which is now drawing to a close. The project has renewed and upgraded the key main rail line and it links some of the key population areas of the country. It must accommodate not only many long-distance passenger trains, but numerous local and regional passenger services. The west coast main line also handles 40 per cent. of the nation's rail freight. The work of rebuilding has taken place on a live railway, but it has been and is a success story. It has been a team project in that it brought together Network Rail, the train operators and those who carried out the work.
	The £8.8 billion of public money was to provide a railway that is safe, allows trains to operate reliably and has headroom for growth in both passenger and freight traffic. Capacity is being provided for 80 per cent. more long-distance passenger trains and a 60 per cent. increase in freight traffic. Those are the parameters for meeting the demand for services. One important feature of west coast route modernisation is to secure the best return for taxpayers on the investment. Another is to ensure that rail contributes the maximum possible to the overall transport network of the country. The issue is rightly about getting passengers to use rail in preference to other modes of transport, and experience to date indicates that that is being achieved.
	However, difficult choices have to be made and they include allocating resources where they can deliver the best possible service. It should also be noted that the Government have required the drafting in of 19 additional tilting 125-mph diesel Voyager trains, the use of five new trans-Pennine diesel trains and the delivery of 30 additional 100-mph electric trains, on top of the new Pendolino fleet. Much of the new timetable planned for December 2008 is focused on the optimal use of those resources, the efficient deployment of which is vital to deliver additional seats for the rapid growth in train use. The longer-distance services will be able to run much faster, and much effort is going into ensuring that the weekend services will, at long last, be similar to those of weekdays.
	Passenger transport on the west coast main line continues to grow, and has done since the introduction of the revised timetables in September 2004. Overall, there has been an increase well exceeding 50 per cent. and in some cases the growth has been almost 80 per cent. Our predictions are that that will treble over the next period to 2012, with the route generating more than £1 billion in annual revenue. Additional business has been generated at many stations along the west coast route, including Lockerbie. However, it is not a station where business is likely to grow significantly when compared to the other locations on the line.
	Let me pick up on some of the points that the hon. Gentleman made about the number of services. There are currently 15 northbound and 11 southbound services across the day, which are provided by Virgin West Coast and First TransPennine Express. Of the southbound trains, two are for London, four for Birmingham and four for Manchester Airport, with a First Scotrail service terminating at Carlisle. Typical journey times outside the peak are more than four hours to London, more than three hours to Birmingham and two and three quarter hours to Manchester Airport. Northbound services are split evenly between Glasgow and Edinburgh and travel times are between one hour and one hour and 15 minutes.
	The new timetables that are being introduced next month take advantage of completion of the west coast route modernisation project. They are also designed around the constraints governing rolling stock availability and getting the most out of the new infrastructure. In particular, the services will, for the first time, start to become competitive with air travel services for London and Birmingham to Glasgow and Birmingham to Edinburgh. Compared with pre-upgrade services, Anglo-Scottish journey times will be reduced by some 80 minutes.
	According to the December 2008 timetable, Lockerbie will be served on a broadly two-hourly pattern, with nine northbound and 10 southbound trains—one of the requirements for Lockerbie put forward by Scottish Ministers in terms of their aspirations for a broadly two-hourly pattern of services at off-peak times. That is an improvement on the pre-project situation in 2003-04, when nine northbound and seven southbound trains were offered. The London train will be re-timed to call early in the morning with two return evening services, allowing business travellers to make a day trip.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to arrivals at Glasgow and Edinburgh before 9 o'clock. First TransPennine Express had intended that the 06.58 departure from Carlisle would stop at Lockerbie at 07.17 and reach Edinburgh by 08.32. However, following the discovery that the service could not be accommodated at Edinburgh Waverley station, resources had to be redirected to form the 06.03 Manchester to Edinburgh train, which calls at Lockerbie at 08.15 and arrives in Edinburgh at 09.17.
	Those are some of the challenges faced in meeting a complex set of demands by the travelling public.

Russell Brown: I congratulate the hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this debate. My hon. Friend talks about the difficulties in readjusting timetables. Heading north, the station before Lockerbie is Carlisle. The change in the timetable that takes place next month creates difficulties whereby people getting off at Carlisle to change trains to head into south-west Scotland on the Glasgow and south-west line will miss trains by two minutes or have to wait more than 40 minutes for a connection. This has been badly judged by Virgin Trains. People travelling north to Stranraer, at the furthest point in my constituency, will more often than not miss a five-minute change and be left stranded in Carlisle.